NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court on Thursday granted bail to Chief Executive Officer of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) Chitra Ramkrishna in the money laundering case related to alleged illegal phone tapping and snooping of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) employees.
Allowing Ramkrishna's bail application, Justice Jasmeet Singh also noted that there is no allegation that the applicant has derived or obtained any property or proceeds of crime.
The court pointed out that it is wrong to allege that she conspired to illegally tap and record calls as per the records and termed ED's averment as 'vague and bald.'
"As per the documents placed before me, it is observed that NSE was recording conversations since 1997 through other vendors and the transactions with ISEC occurred from 2009 to 2017. The Applicant was DMD of NSE till 2010 and JMD till 2013 and MD till 2016. As call recording was done by NSE prior to ISEC‟s involvement, it is wrong to allege that the Applicant conspired with ISEC to illegally tap and record calls. Thus, the ingredients of section 120B IPC are not made out in the present case," Justice Singh averred.
In relation to the money laundering case, the court said, the provisions of PMLA cannot be attracted to the present case.
Underlining that ED could not identify any victims in the case, the court said, "Pertinently, no victim has been identified by the ED who has suffered a wrongful loss on account of deception or cheating by the Applicant. Except for a vague and bald averment that customers have been cheated, there is no mention of the names of the persons who have been cheated. Thus, the ingredients of section 420 IPC are not made out in the present case."
Ramkrishna was arrested by the CBI in the alleged NSE co-location scam, was arrested in the present case by the Enforcement Directorate on July 14 last year.
Deciding her bail, Justice Singh said, in the present case, he is only deciding prima-facie whether the scheduled offences are made out against the applicant.
The former NSE managing director, who was earlier arrested by the CBI in the alleged NSE co-location scam, was arrested in the present case by the Enforcement Directorate on July 14 last year.
She was granted bail in the CBI case by the high court in September last year.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) had opposed her bail plea in the present case on grounds that she was the "mastermind" behind the conspiracy.
The phone tapping case, according to the ED, pertains to a period from 2009 to 2017 when former NSE CEO Ravi Narain, Ramkrishna, Executive Vice-President Ravi Varanasi, and Head (Premises) Mahesh Haldipur and others conspired to cheat NSE and its employees and for the purpose, engaged iSEC Services Pvt Ltd for illegal interception of phone calls of employees of the NSE in the guise of doing periodic study of cyber vulnerabilities of the NSE.
Seeking bail, Ramakrishna had argued that no scheduled offence was made out against her and the allegations also did not fall within the rigours of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act .
Ramkrishna was appointed as Joint MD NSE in 2009 and remained in the position till March 31, 2013. She got elevated to MD and CEO on April 1, 2013. Her tenure at NSE ended in December 2016.