The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has taken custody of former Mumbai Police Commissioner Sanjay Pandey in the NSE phone tapping case registered by the agency. The Delhi court has granted Pandey's four day custody to the CBI, agency officials informed on Saturday. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) had registered a separate offence of money laundering in the phone tapping case and had arrested Pandey in the said case on July 19 and was currently under judicial custody.
In July this year, the CBI had registered a case against a private company based at New Delhi, founded by former Mumbai Police Commissioner Sanjay Pandey, its then Directors & other officials and four officials of National Stock Exchange (NSE) Mumbai on a reference from Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) in connection with alleged illegal interception of telephones of NSE employees carried out by its top management in collusion with said private company between 2009-2017.
It was also alleged that the transcripts of these calls were provided by the said private company and received by the senior officials of NSE. An amount of approximately Rs 4.45 crore was allegedly paid to said private company for this activity, the agency had claimed.
Those named in the CBI's FIR were M/s iSEC Services Pvt. Ltd, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi and its then officials including Santosh Pandey, then Director; Anand Narayan, then Director; Armaan Pandey, then Director; Manish Mittal, then Director; Naman Chaturvedi, then Senior Information Security Analyst & others including Sanjay Pandey, Arun Kumar Singh along with Ravi Narain, then MD; Chitra Ramakrishna, then DMD; Ravi Varanasi, then Executive Vice President; Mahesh Haldipur, then Head (Premises), all of NSE and other unknown persons.
According to the CBI, it was alleged that during 2009 to 2017 Narain, Ramakrishna, Varanasi and Haldipur and the said private company conspired to illegally intercept the telephones of NSE employees. In furtherance to this conspiracy, the said private company was allegedly engaged in the guise of conducting ‘Periodic Study of Cyber Vulnerabilities' at the NSE. It was further alleged that top officials of NSE issued Agreement/Work Orders in favour of said private 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 as provided Under section 5 of the Indian Telegraph Act. No consent of the employees of NSE was also taken in this matter," claimed a CBI official.
Pandey, a 1986-batch Indian Police Service (IPS) officer retired from service on June 30. Before his four-month stint as Mumbai’s commissioner of police beginning March 1, he served as acting Maharashtra director general of police (DGP).
