CBI files charge sheet against ex-Mumbai Police chief, ex-NSE CEO in co-location scam case
Dec 23, 2022
New Delhi [India], December 23 : The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has filed a charge sheet at a court in Delhi against former Mumbai Police commissioner Sanjay Pandey, former CEO and MD of National Stock Exchange (NSE) Chitra Ramkrishna and others in connection to the co-location scam case, officials said on Friday.
The accused named in the charge sheet have been identified as M/s. ISEC Services Pvt Ltd; Sanjay Pandey, the then Director of ISEC; Naman Chaturvedi, the then Senior Information Security Analyst of ISEC; Jagdish Tukaram Dalvi of ISEC and officials of NSE i.e., Ravi Varanasi, the then Executive Vice President; Mahesh Haldipur, the then Head (Premises); Ravi Narain, the then Managing Director Chitra Ramakrishna, the then DMD/Managing Director; Anand Subramanian, the then Group Operating Officer; S.B. Thosar, and the then OSD and Bhupesh Mistry, then Manager (Premises).
CBI registered a case in July 2022 against the said private company and others.
During the course of the investigation of another case related to the co-location scam in NSE, an act of illegal interception of the landline phones of NSE employees was unearthed.
It was alleged that unauthorized recording and monitoring of personal call lines in NSE started in 1997 when the MD and then DMD/MD of NSE connected call lines of NSE employees to a Digital Voice Recorder provided by a private company.
During 1997-2009, the then DMD with the help of NSE employees allegedly supervised the interception.
It was further alleged that during 2009, the work for monitoring of calls was given to another/accused private company of Delhi/Mumbai which was started and is run by the then Director of said company. In order to maintain secrecy, the work order was allegedly issued to a said private company in the name of "conducting a periodic study of Cyber Vulnerabilities".
It was also alleged that in 2012, the said private company purchased and installed a 4 X PRI Quad Span Digital Voice Logger at the basement of NSE by splitting the PRI lines of MTNL. This logger was capable of recording 120 calls simultaneously.
The employees of the said private company were given unauthorized access to NSE premises in a manner to listen to these calls and submit weekly reports to NSE officials-then Executive Vice President and then the Head (Premises). The reports in turn were being shown on a regular basis to the MD and then the DMD/MD of NSE. The work order of said private company was renewed every year from 2009-2017.
It was found during the investigation that an accused (then Director of the accused private company) working as a Police officer was allegedly managing the affairs of said company.
The NSE ended up paying Rs 4.54 crore (approx.) in 8 years to the said private company for carrying out such illegal interception of NSE employees in the name of a cyber vulnerability study.
The call records of hundreds of NSE employees were allegedly kept in the custody of said private company and the entire interception was done without the knowledge or consent of the NSE board and NSE employees.
During the investigation, CBI arrested the then Director of a said private company, the then MD, and the then DMD/MD of NSE.
