Former Mumbai Police chief Sanjay Pandey gets bail in NSE phone tapping case
He was arrested in July after the ED launched a money laundering inquiry into a matter related to traders having preferential access to the stock exchange.
The Delhi High Court on Thursday granted bail to former Mumbai Police Commissioner Sanjay Pandey in a money laundering case related to the alleged tapping of phones and snooping of employees of the National Stock Exchange, Bar and Bench reported.
The detailed order passed by Justice Jasmeet Singh is awaited.
Pandey had been arrested by the Enforcement Directorate on July 19 and sent to judicial custody.
The former police commissioner was booked by the central agency on money laundering charges on July 14 along with former chiefs of the National Stock Exchange Chitra Ramkrishna and Ravi Narain.
The case is linked to the alleged phone tapping of employees of the National Stock Exchange when the co-location scam took place within the trading platform. The Central Bureau of Investigation has alleged that Pandey had set up a company called iSec Securities, which was used for electronic surveillance of the employees.
The co-location scam pertains to allegations of preferential access to the National Stock Exchange trading platform that allowed certain brokers to trade before the markets opened. The first FIR in the case was filed in 2018.
Ramkrishna and Narain, both former managing directors and chief executive officers of the stock exchange, have already been booked for the co-location scam by the Central Bureau of Investigation.
Pandey was first questioned by the Enforcement Directorate on July 5 for its investigation into a money laundering angle in the co-location scam. He had retired as Mumbai Police commissioner on June 30.
Enforcement Directorate officials allege that the agency had found evidence of secret phone surveillance during the questioning. The agency then informed about the development to the Union home affairs ministry, which asked the Central Bureau of Investigation to look into the case.
iSec Securities was one of the firms tasked to conduct security audits at the National Stock Exchange between 2010 to 2015, during which the co-location scam allegedly took place. The company did not alert the stock exchange that its servers were compromised, the Central Bureau of Investigation has alleged.