In the co-location facility offered by the NSE, brokers could place their servers within the stock exchange premises giving them faster access to the markets.
A special Delhi court on Monday sent former MD & CEO of National Stock Exchange (NSE) Chitra Ramkrishna to 14 days’ judicial custody, in connection with the irregularities that took place at the exchange between 2010 to 2013.
During the hearing, the court expressed surprise over the Central Bureau of Investigations’ (CBI) decision not to seek further custodial interrogation of Ramkrishna even though it sad she was not cooperating with the probe. When the CBI counsel said said she has stopped cooperating, CBI Special Judge Sanjeev Aggarwal asked, “Why you’re saying judicial custody remand now?” The CBI counsel responded saying she was “very much influential”.
The CBI had initially sought 14 days’ custodial interrogation of Ramkrishna. After seven days of quizzing, the agency on Monday refused to seek further custody of her.
Dismissing her 450-page bail application, the court said, “immediately after the secession of police remand, is it not a bit early?” When Ramkrishna’s counsel sought home-cooked food during her judicial custody, the judge said, “I have also had the food many times. It’s quite good.” Earlier, the CBI had alleged that Ramkrishna continuously misguided the investigation officer by giving wrong statements. The accused in the conspiracy with former NSE group operating officer Anand Subramanian influenced the NSE officials to facilitate him in having access to important decision-making processes and shared sensitive information about financials, appraisals, increments and strategy with an unknown person, who is also referred to as “Siddha Purush” by Ramkrishna.
The CBI also claimed that Muralidharan Natarajan, the CTO of NSETECH, was responsible for putting in place the co-location architecture at NSE and was reporting to Ramkrishna.
It is alleged that some brokers in connivance with insiders abused the algorithm and the co-location facility to make windfall profits.
In the co-location facility offered by the NSE, brokers could place their servers within the stock exchange premises giving them faster access to the markets.
Investigations further revealed that during 2013-16, after Ramkrishna took over as MD & CEO of NSE, OPG Securities was allowed to connect to the secondary server of the COLO-TBT Dissemination server for over 300 trading days causing it undue gain, it said.
The CBI had also quizzed another former NSE CEO Ravi Narain in connection with the alleged abuse of the co-location facility by an NSE stockbroker. An audit report had allegedly referred to Subramanian as a mysterious yogi, but this was dismissed by the Sebi in its report on February 11. In its order, the regulator had said Ramkrishna and Subramanian committed ‘financial misdeeds’, and identified serious governance lapses and misrepresentation of facts at NSE between 2013 and 2017.