THE TAP DANCE WAS A TANG0?
How the mighty have fallen. When Sanjay Pandey, then acting Director General of Police (DGP) of Maharashtra, recommended an FIR against fellow IPS officer Rashmi Shukla in an illegal phonetapping case in December 2021, he would have had little premonition that a similar scandal would catch up with him. The Enforcement Directorate on July 19 arrested Pandey in connection with the alleged illegal snooping on National Stock Exchange (NSE) employees, seen as potentially a key part of a mega scam. Pandey had retired just days ago as Mumbai police commissioner, after a ‘blotless’ career.
At the root of the charges is iSec
Services Private Limited, a security audit firm Pandey set up in 2001. The CBI claims that between 2009 and 2017, then NSE managing director Chitra Ramakrishna and vicechairman Ravi Narain hired iSec to snoop on NSE employees to find out if the victims were leaking exchangerelated information. The firm had allegedly received around Rs 4.45 crore as the contract amount. This was also the period of the colocation scam at the NSE.
Colocation refers to the way IT resources are installed. The scam pertains to alleged unfair practices by Ramakrishna and Narain, wherein they provided some brokers faster colocation facilities with better hardware specifications while engaged in algorithmic trading. That allowed them unfair advantage, resulting in huge trading gains. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has found that such preferential access was given to at least 15 stock brokers at NSE’s colocation facility. In 2019, the Sebi directed NSE to disgorge Rs 624.89 crore and barred it from accessing the market for funds for six months. It also asked Ramakrishna and Narain to part with 25 per cent of their salaries during the period and prohibited them from associating with any listed company or market infrastructure institution for five years. After the scam was gradually uncovered in 201516, both Ramakrishna and Narain had resigned.
During its probe into the scam, the CBI claims to have recovered payment receipts to iSec, voice samples of recordings and original transcripts of the recordings. Two laptops were recovered from the premises of iSec. Evidence of phonetapping was found on four MTNL lines, with each line accommodating 30 calls at a time. The agency had conducted searches at 18 premises in Mumbai, Pune, Kota, Lucknow and DelhiNCR, including the residence of Sanjay Pandey.
A Sebi statement read: “It was alleged that from 2009 to 2017, the accused and a private company conspired to illegally intercept the telephones of NSE employees…. The private company was allegedly engaged in the guise of conducting a ‘Periodic Study of Cyber
Vulnerabilities’ at the NSE. It was further alleged that top officials of NSE issued agreements (work orders) in favour of the private company and illegally intercepted the phone calls of its employees…in contravention of provisions under the Indian Telegraph Act.” The ED too has filed a case under criminal sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) against Ramakrishna, Narain and Pandey. The agency arrested Ramakrishna on July 13.
Sanjay Pandey, a graduate from IIT Kanpur, had built a reputation as an honest, nononsense officer. Loath to bow before political masters, he quit his job in 2001, setting up iSec Services. He rejoined the force in 2011.
Pandey created a sensation when his report to then Maharashtra CM Uddhav Thackeray in 2020 concluded that a senior IPS officer was handinglove with fugitive gangster Dawood Ibrahim. Impressed, Uddhav appointed him as acting DGP in April 2021 without the mandatory approval from the Union Public Service Commission. During his 10month stint, Pandey approved action against IPS officers Rashmi Shukla and Param Bir Singh. Shukla and Singh were on Uddhav’s radar for leaking details of his ministers’ alleged corruption. Pandey’s move to book them in cases of illegal phonetapping and extortion respectively was seen as his doing the bidding of political bosses. Uddhav named Pandey as Mumbai police commissioner in February 2022. Under his watch, BJP leaders Nitesh Rane and Mohit Bharatiya were booked in minor cases, and independent MLA Ravi Rana and his MP wife Navneet were arrested for threatening to chant the Hanuman chalisa in front of the CM’s residence.
A public projection of transparency was Pandey’s forte. He used to travel from his residence in Andheri to his office in south Mumbai in crowded local trains. He made his phone number public for Mumbaikars and took remedial action on complaints posted on his Facebook page. He is also the first commissioner to be arrested by the ED in a case linked to moneylaundering. We’ll soon know if the muchtouted transparency was a false facade. ■
IT IS ALLEGED THAT PANDEY’S FIRM ISEC RECEIVED RS 4.45 CRORE FROM NSE FOR SNOOPING ON EMPLOYEES