NSE phone tapping case: Ex-Mumbai Police chief Sanjay Pandey approaches Delhi HC for bail
Aug 12, 2022
New Delhi [India], August 12 : Former Mumbai Police Commissioner Sanjay Pandey has moved the Delhi High Court for bail in connection with the National Stock Exchange phone tapping and snooping case.
Pandey was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) under the charges of money laundering. The bench of Justice Jasmeet Singh will hear Pandey's bail plea on Tuesday next week.
A trial court had recently denied him bail in the matter and said that considering the broad probability based on the material placed before the court, the involvement of the accused in the offence of money laundering as defined by the Apex Court cannot be ruled out.
Furthermore, the applicant Sanjay Pandey was the top cop of Mumbai police till June 30, hence the apprehension of the Investigating agency that the applicant may influence witnesses or tamper with evidence is not unfounded, the trial court said while denying Pandey bail.
In the bail plea before the trial court, 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."
The case is clearly motivated by political considerations and it is also evident from the fact that an offence that allegedly occurred between 2009 and 2017 is being investigated in 2022 i.e., thirteen years after its purported commencement and five years after its purported closure; and that too within a week of the Applicant demitting his office, Pandey's bail petition stated.
Advocate Aditya Wadhwa with Advocate Siddharth Sunil represented Sanjay Pandey and submitted that the huge delay in the registration of the said FIR raises serious doubts as to the bonafide of the investigation. It appears that the applicant (Sanjay Pandey) is arraigned in the present case, for no fault of his own, and only to fulfil some political vendetta.
For ED, Additional Solicitor General (ASG) SV Raju and Special Public Prosecutor Naveen Kumar Matta had appeared and submitted that he (Sanjay Pandey) resigned in April 2000 and there was litigation between 2001-2006 during his service. VRS was moved in 2007 and in October 2008 and he had withdrawn that. He formed a company incorporated in 2001, when this was incorporated he was still in service and even when he was not the director of the company, he attended the meeting. We have records defacto he was in control.
ED further submitted that the contract came in as facade 120-B is a predicate offence held. MTNL lines were tapped. This company was a family concern and Rs 4.54 crore were the proceeds of the crime.
The agency's move came after it reportedly found enough evidence in the NSE co-location scam in which it wanted to know the role of the audit company, incorporated in 2001 by a retired Mumbai Police chief, for raising a red flag that the NSE servers were compromised. The compromise had allowed one of the trading companies to get unfair access to the system, resulting in windfall profits.
The case is already being probed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) since 2018.
It is alleged that the firm incorporated by Pandey was one of the IT companies tasked with conducting security audits at NSE from 2010 to 2015 when the co-location scam is believed to have taken place.
