NSE co-location case: Delhi Court grants bail to ex-Mumbai police chief Sanjay Pandey
Dec 21, 2022
New Delhi [India], December 21 : The Rouse Avenue Court of Delhi on Wednesday granted bail to Former Mumbai Police Commissioner Sanjay Pandey in connection to the National Stock Exchange (NSE) co-location and phone tapping case.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had arrested him in September in connection to the case. Recently, Pandey was granted bail by the Delhi High Court in Enforcement Directorate (ED) case related to the NSE phone tapping case.
Special Judge Sunena Sharma on Wednesday said, "Considering the fact that the High Court has already granted bail to the accused/applicant in the connected ED matter, which in the light of Section 45 PMLA embodies far more stringent conditions for grant of bail, I find no reason to decline bail to the applicant in the present case. As already noted above, all the offences other than predicate offences of the present FIR are bailable. In view thereof, the accused is granted bail."
The court also noted the observation made by the High Court regarding the lack of essential ingredients of the predicate offences and said, this court is inclined to grant bail to the accused/applicant even in the instant case. The mere fact that CBI was not a party to the bail application of the applicant moved before the High Court in said ED matter, cannot be a ground to urge this court to take a different view with regard to the predicate offences.
"Undoubtedly, the observations contained in the aforementioned order are reflective of only the prima facie view taken by the High Court but, this court also at this stage is required to only take a prima facie view of the matter," the court said.
Advocates Tanveer Ahmed, Aditya Wadhwa, Siddharth Sunil and Swati Khanna appeared for Sanjay Pandey in the matter.
In his bail plea before the trial court, Sanjay Pandey stated that "he had investigated and prosecuted several high-profile and politically sensitive cases and the instant proceedings are a political fallout of honest and sincere discharge of his duties as a senior police officer."
ED had also arrested Ravi Narain and Chitra Ramakrishna in connection to a money laundering case related to the alleged illegal phone tapping of the exchange's employees. Ravi Narain was the third person arrested by ED in the case.
Following the orders of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) registered a case in the alleged National Stock Exchange (NSE) co-location scam that involved the phone tapping of NSE employees.
Pandey is a 1986-batch Indian Police Service (IPS) officer who retired from service on June 30. During the investigation, Pandey was found to be closely associated with the functioning and activities of a company called iSec Securities Pvt. Ltd, the investigation agencies said.
The company had conducted a security audit of NSE around the time when the alleged co-location irregularities took place.
The company was incorporated by Pandey in March 2001 and he quit as its director in May 2006. His son and mother took over the charge of the company. It has been alleged that illegal phone tapping of NSE employees was done between 2009-17.
