CBI books Mumbai ex-top cop & NSE ex-chiefs for phone taps

NEW DELHI: CBI has filed an FIR against ex-Mumbai police commissioner Sanjay Pandey and former National Stock Exchange (NSE) bosses Chitra Ramkrishna and Ravi Narain among others for allegedly tapping phones of NSE employees between 2009 and 2017 and may expand the scope of the probe amid indications that an illegal surveillance facility at the bourse may have been used to snoop on people other than its employees.
CBI is suspecting that a firm, iSEC securities, which was started by Pande and engaged by NSE, could be running a big operation of illegal surveillance by tapping phones with illegal equipment. CBI, sources said, has discovered facility to tap around 120 calls simultaneously with four MTNL lines — each with a capacity of 30 lines — in place at NSE office.
At the time, some NSE officials had allegedly tried to dispose of the tapping machine as e-waste, sources alleged. CBI has also gathered evidence of payments of at least Rs 4.5 crore to a firm related to Pandey in lieu of discovering “security vulnerabilities at the NSE”, officials said.
It is also being probed if Pandey used imported surveillance equipment and tapped phones. The tapping exercise was allegedly stopped after reports of the co-location scam started tumbling out in 2017-18.
Searches were conducted at around 18 locations across India on Friday, including Delhi-NCR, Chandigarh, Lucknow, Kota, Mumbai and Pune, officials said adding that voice samples, transcripts of calls and a “raid server” have been recovered from office of the firm located in Jogeshwari, Mumbai. Sleuths also seized 25 desktops and two laptops with incriminating data.
CBI’s FIR comes on the directions of the home ministry. According to the MHA’s complaint, iSEC securities was tasked with conducting illegal surveillance of NSE employees by its former chiefs. After he returned to the service, Pandey’s relatives took over as directors of iSEC securities with the contract of security audit of NSE servers but failed to flag the breaches which led to the “co-location scam”.
“CBI has registered a case against a private company based at New Delhi, its then directors and other officials and four officials of NSE, Mumbai including then MD, then DMD, then executive vice-president, then head (Premises) and others on a reference from the home ministry in connection with alleged illegal interception of telephones of NSE employees carried out by its top management in collusion with the private company,” CBI spokesperson RC Joshi said.
As per CBI, the company was allegedly engaged in the guise of conducting ‘periodic study of cyber vulnerabilities’ at NSE. “It was further alleged that top officials of NSE issued agreement/work orders in favour of the private company and illegally intercepted the phone calls of its employees by installing machines, in contravention of provisions under the Indian Telegraph Act,” Joshi added.
No permission for this activity was taken from the competent authority as provided under Section 5 of the Act and no consent of the employees of NSE was also taken in this matter, CBI has claimed. It has also been alleged that the transcripts of these calls were provided by the company and received by senior officials of NSE even as an amount of Rs 4.45 crore was allegedly paid to the company for this activity.