NSE co-location case: Chitra Ramkrishna moves for bail in CBI court

Former NSE Managing Director and CEO Chitra Ramkrishna has moved for bail in the CBI court. She had been arrested in the ongoing co-location case on March 6, 2022.

On March 14, a Delhi Court had sent the former MD and CEO of NSE to 14 days of judicial custody in connection with the case. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had earlier revealed that Ramkrishna had misused her official position to re-designate Anand Subramanian as Group Operating Officer and Advisor to MD from April 1, 2015, without bringing this to the notice of NRC and the board.

So far, the CBI probe has shown that Ramkrishna was appointed as Joint MD in 2009 and remained in the position till March 31, 2013, with the power of DMD. Ramkrishna got elevated as MD and CEO on April 1, 2013.

It was during this period that co-location facility was started by NSE, the CBI has alleged.

The agency has also found that Muralidharan Natarajan, the CTO of NSETECH (a subsidiary of NSE), who was responsible for setting up co-location architecture at the NSE, was directly reporting to Ramkrishna, officials said.

On February 25, the CBI had arrested former NSE group operating officer Anand Subramanian after expanding its probe into the co-location scam in the exchange following ''fresh facts'' in the Sebi report that referred to a mysterious yogi guiding the actions of Ramkrishna.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) on February 11 had charged Ramkrishna and others with alleged governance lapses in the appointment of Subramanian as the chief strategic advisor and his re-designation as group operating officer and advisor to MD.

Subramanian was allegedly referred to as the ''yogi'' in the forensic audit but Sebi in its final report had rejected the claim.

Ramkrishna, who succeeded former CEO Ravi Narain in 2013, had appointed Subramanian as her advisor who was later elevated as group operating officer (GOO) at a fat pay cheque of Rs 4.21 crore annually.

Subramanian's controversial appointment and subsequent elevation, besides crucial decisions, were guided by an unidentified person who Ramkrishna claimed was a formless mysterious yogi dwelling in the Himalayas, a probe into her email exchanges during the Sebi-ordered audit showed.

Sebi has levied a fine of Rs 3 crore on Ramkrishna, Rs 2 crore each on NSE, Subramanian, former NSE MD and CEO Ravi Narain, and Rs 6 lakh on V R Narasimhan, who was the chief regulatory officer and compliance officer. Ramkrishna left NSE in 2016.

To be sure, in the co-location facility offered by NSE, brokers could place their servers within the stock exchange premises giving them faster access to the markets. It is alleged that some brokers in connivance with insiders abused the algorithm and the co-location facility to make windfall profits.

(With Inputs from Munish Pandey and agencies)

Also read: NSE co-location case: Court sends Chitra Ramkrishna to 7-day CBI remand

Also read: NSE co-location scam: Delhi court sends Chitra Ramkrishna to 14-day judicial custody