Delhi High Court grants bail to former NSE MD Chitra Ramkrishna in money laundering case

Chitra Ramkrishna has been directed not to leave the country during the bail period and surrender her passport at the time of release before the concerned investigating officer.

Former CEO of the National Stock Exchange (NSE), Chitra Ramkrishna. (Express Photo)

4 min readNew DelhiFeb 10, 2023 02:41 AM IST First published on: Feb 9, 2023 at 11:24 AM IST

The Delhi High Court Thursday granted bail to former managing director and chief executive officer of National Stock Exchange (NSE) Chitra Ramkrishna, prima facie holding that reasonable grounds for bail were made out. She was booked in a money laundering probe of the Enforcement Directorate pertaining to the alleged illegal phone tapping of the NSE employees.

A single-judge bench of Justice Jasmeet Singh held, “Prima facie there are reasonable grounds to believe that the Applicant is not guilty of the offence and she is not likely to commit any offence while on bail. I have given an opportunity to the ED to oppose the bail application thereby satisfying the twin conditions enumerated under 45 PMLA.”

The high court granted bail to Ramkrishna subject to her furnishing a personal bond of Rs 1 lakh with two sureties in the like amount. She has been directed not to leave the country during the bail period and surrender her passport at the time of release before the concerned investigating officer.

Ramkrishna was charged under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed an FIR for criminal conspiracy, cheating under Indian Penal Code, as well as provisions of the Information Technology (IT) Act, Prevention of Corruption (PC) Act and the Indian Telegraph Act in the co-location scam. Ramkrishna was arrested by the ED on July 14 last year in the present case.

The high court held that the contract between the NSE and ISEC permitted the recording of conversations and the tapping of phone calls without the consent of the concerned persons is an offence punishable under the Indian Telegraph Act and Indian Wireless Telegraphy Act while it is not a scheduled offence under the PMLA.

It also held that the invocation of the Information Technology Act for this action is “misplaced in the present case”. It said neither Ramkrishna nor the NSE was acting under the powers conferred under the IT Act or its rules, hence offence under the IT Act for breach of confidentiality/privacy was also not made out against Ramkrishna.

With respect to criminal conspiracy, the high court held that ingredients of the “offence are not established since the criminal intent i.e., agreement to do an illegal act as defined under sec.120A IPC is not made out”.

Perusing the documents, the high court observed that NSE had been recording conversations since 1997 through other vendors, and its transaction with ISEC occurred between 2009 to 2017.

“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,” the high court held.

With respect to the offence of cheating, the HC held that the ED had not identified any victim who suffered on account of cheating by Ramkrishna. The court said that the averments made by ED were “vague” that “customers have been cheated, there is no mention of the names of the persons who have been cheated”, and hence offence of cheating is not made out.

With respect to the offence under the PC Act, the high court held that there was “no evidence placed on record to prove corruption or abuse of position” by Ramkrishna. Justice Singh further said that there were no allegations against Ramkrishna that she had “derived or obtained any property or proceeds of crime” or that she had “concealed, possessed, used, projected or claimed any proceeds of crime as untainted property”.

According to the ED, the case pertains to the period between 2009 and 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.

For this purpose, the ED claimed, they engaged iSEC Services Pvt Ltd for illegal interception of NSE’s employees’ phone calls in the guise of doing periodic studies of cyber vulnerabilities of the NSE. Ramkrishna 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.