A Delhi court on Monday remanded former National Stock Exchange Managing Director Chitra Ramkrishna to 14-day judicial custody in the 2018 co-location scam case, according to The Indian Express.
She was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation on March 6. The case pertains to allegedly granting preferential access to the trading platform to certain private financial service firms.
Ramkrishna’s lawyers have said that they would file a bail application. The next hearing on the matter will take place on March 28.
Meanwhile, the court rejected Ramkrishna’s request for special facilities in the jail. She had requested for home-cooked food, a prayer book and masks.
“VIP prisoners want everything, then every rule should be changed,” said Special Judge Sanjeev Aggarwal, according to Bar and Bench. “Every prisoner is the same. She’s not a VIP.”
On March 6, the Central Bureau of Investigation had told the court that Ramkrishna had been arrested as she gave “evasive” replies during the investigation.
The investigating agency said Ramkrishna refused to recognise Anand Subramanian, former group operating officer at the National Stock Exchange. Subramanian had been arrested in relation to the case on February 25.
Subramanian and Ramkrishna recently made news after the Securities and Exchange Board of India had said on February 13 that the former NSE chief took decisions at the stock exchange based on the guidance of an unknown Himalayan ascetic.
The Central Bureau of Investigation suspects that Ramkrishna and Subramanian made up the story about the Himalayan “yogi” to mislead the investigation into the co-location scam.
The co-location scam
In May 2018, the Central Bureau of Investigation had booked the owner of Delhi-based financial advisor firm OPG Securities Sanjay Gupta and his brother-in-law Aman Kakrady, and some officials of the National Stock Exchange for manipulating the trading platform.
“It was alleged that the owner and promoter of said private company [OPG Securities] abused the server architecture of NSE in conspiracy with unknown officials of NSE,” the Central Bureau of Investigation had said in the first information report filed in 2018.
It was also alleged that unknown officials of the National Stock Exchange had provided “unfair access” to OPG Securities using the co-location facility during the period 2010-2012 that enabled it to login first to the server of the exchange.
This allowed the financial services firm to get market data ahead of any other broker, according to the FIR. Ramkrishna was the chief executive officer and managing director of the exchange from April 2013 to December 2016.
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