The Supreme Court on Monday refused to set aside a Delhi High Court order granting bail to ex-NSE head Chitra Ramkrishna in the co-location scam case. The CBI – which arrested Chitra Ramkrisha in March last year over allegations she granted preferential market data access to a stock broker – had challenged the High Court’s September order granting her default bail.
Dismissing the appeal, justices Ajay Rastogi and Bela M Trivedi said the High Court’s observations would be construed as limited to consideration of default bail and not affect merits of the case.
Ramkrishna last week also secured bail in a money laundering case related to phone tapping allegations; that case was filed by the Enforcement Directorate after it arrested her in July last year. The ED opposed the plea on grounds Ramkrishna is the ‘mastermind’ behind the conspiracy.
According to the ED the phone tapping case pertains to a period between 2009 and 2017 when Ramkrishna and others, including former NSE chief executive Ravi Narain, engaged iSEC Services for illegal tapping of employees’ phones as part of a conspiracy to cheat them and the exchange.
However, the Delhi High Court’s Justice Jasmeet Singh said there were ‘reasonable grounds (prima facie) to believe the applicant is not guilty… and is not likely to commit offence while on bail’.
The court also observed that no complaint or victim had been identified by the ED – specifically nobody who had suffered wrongful loss on account of deception or cheating by the accused.
The court further said that in the matter at hand ‘there is no allegation the applicant derived or obtained any property or proceeds of crime’. “Additionally, there is no allegation or evidence… to suggest the applicant concealed, possessed, used, projected or claimed any proceeds…’
Ramkrishna had been jailed for almost seven months in this matter.
She was appointed as joint managing director of the NSE in 2009 and was promoted to managing director and chief executive in 2013. Her tenure at the exchange ended in December 2016.
