NSE co-location case: Delhi Court sends ex-Mumbai Police commissioner Sanjay Pandey to 9-day ED remand

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) while seeking custody of former Mumbai police commissioner Sanjay Pandey has told the court that they have sufficient evidence pertaining to installation of machine to tap the calls of National Stock Exchange (NSE) employees. In his defence, Pandey told the court that he was never involved in any tapping of calls and neither had equipment for tapping. The court has remanded Pandey to nine days ED custody in the case pertaining to the suspected money laundering in the NSE employees illegal phone tapping.

Pandey was placed under the arrest by the ED officials on Tuesday evening after several hours of questioning. He was produced before the Rouse Avenue court in Delhi by the ED officials on Wednesday afternoon. Special Judge Sunena Sharma allowed ED to question Pandey after the agency said he was required to be confronted with other accused in the case.

Additional Solicitor General S V Raju, appearing for the ED, had moved an application seeking Pandey's 14-day custodial interrogation, alleging that Pandey had committed an unlawful act of tapping of phones, for which purpose Rs 4.45 crore was paid, and it becomes the proceeds of crime.

Pandey however told the court that he never did any phone tapping or live monitoring. “The project for iSEC was called analysis of recorded calls. We never did any tapping or any live monitoring. We neither had equipment nor told to tap. Every recording was done by NSE. Machine installed in NSE and they are the ones who tapped. What is my culpability?” he said.

Advocate Aditya Wadhwa, appearing for Sanjay Pandey, submitted that the company carries out a forensic study of conversations that had been independently recorded by NSE. “I gave an analysis of the same. Call analysis is what I did for them,” Wadhwa said.

Wadhwa said work was of Periodic study of cyber vulnerabilities. “I would isolate suspicious calls. I am checking any suspicious calls within NSE,” he said.

Advocate Wadhwa also submitted on behalf of Pandey, “I was a capable public servant till June 30. I was handling the law and order situation of Mumbai as a police commissioner till then. Suddenly after my retirement, 2 FIRs have been registered against me in just 7 days. And now I am arrested. My arrest is clearly a political vendetta”.

ED had earlier arrested former NSE MD Chitra Ramakrishnan on July 14 after conducting her interrogation which was permitted by the court, where she was produced from jail on an order passed by the judge earlier.

The judge had issued a production warrant against the accused on a plea moved by the ED. Later, the ED arrested Ramakrishnan on the ground of non-cooperation and again produced her before the court and urged for her nine-day custodial interrogation. The court, however, had granted her four-day custody to the agency.

A 1986-batch officer, Pandey retired from service on June 30. Before his four-month stint as Mumbai's commissioner of police, he served as the acting Maharashtra Director General of Police.

The CBI had recently registered a case against M/s iSEC Services Pvt Ltd, a firm founded by Pandey, on a reference from Ministry of Home Affairs in connection with alleged illegal interception of telephones of NSE employees carried out by its top management in collusion with iSEC from 2009-2017. It was further alleged that top officials of NSE issued Agreement/Work Orders in favour of said company and illegally intercepted the phone calls of its employees by installing machine/s, in contravention of provisions under Indian Telegraph Act. No permission for this activity was taken from the Competent Authority and no consent of the employees of NSE was also taken in this matter, the agency had claimed.

The CBI had also alleged that the transcripts of these calls were provided by M/s iSEC Services Pvt Ltd and received by senior officials of the NSE. Nearly Rs 4.45 crore was allegedly paid to the company. The agencies are also probing if phones of 91 NSE employees had been allegedly tapped by M/s iSec Services Pvt Ltd.

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