NSE phone tapping case: Court denies bail to ex-Mumbai top cop

Former Mumbai Police commissioner Sanjay Pandey was arrested on July 19 for his alleged involvement in illegal phone tapping of stock market employees between 2009 and 2017.

Former Mumbai Police commissioner Sanjay Pandey was “prima facie actively involved in the execution of recording and monitoring of calls at National Stock Exchange (NSE) and was directly communicating with employees” at the bourse, a Delhi court said on Thursday as it dismissed his bail application.

Special judge Sunena Sharma said Pandey was “fully aware of the real purposes for which the services of iSec were hired under the guise of ‘Periodic Study of Cyber Vulnerabilities’ and therefore, the money derived from said ostensible purpose prima facie seems to be the proceeds of crime within the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).”

Pandey was arrested on July 19 for his alleged involvement in illegal phone tapping of stock market employees between 2009 and 2017. iSEC Services Pvt Ltd was incorporated by him in March 2001; his son and mother took over the company after he quit as its director in May 2006, according to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) which registered its first information report (FIR) in the case last month.

“The material collected by the IO (investigating officer) during the course of investigation of the instant case, prima facie shows that the accused was in de facto control of the affairs of iSec even after 2006 when he resigned from the Directorship of the company and he kept attending the various meetings of iSec with NSE officials and kept giving instructions to the employees of iSec for execution of work assigned to company by NSE,” the judge said in a 31-page order.

Besides Pandey, the CBI has also named former National Stock Exchange (NSE) chief executive officers (CEOs) Chitra Ramkrishna and Ravi Narain in the case.

Ramkrishna is currently in judicial custody in the NSE co-location fraud case.