A day after her anticipatory bail application was rejected by the court, the CBI on Sunday arrested Chitra Ramkrishna, the former MD and CEO of National Stock Exchange, in the co-location scam.
Over five years after she was ousted, Chitra has been accused of abusing her position to facilitate exploitation of the exchange’s server architecture to provide preferential access to a stock broker. Earlier, the CBI had arrested Anand Subramanian, the former group operating officer of the NSE in the case, whose appointment at Chitra’s behest was done in violation of norms. She has been indicted by Sebi along with Subramanian, her former boss Ravi Narain and some other former colleagues.
Chitra was arrested in Delhi after questioning during which she allegedly remained evasive. The agency had questioned her thrice earlier and found her responses evasive after which senior psychologist from CBI's central forensic science laboratory examined her as well and observed that she had not been answering truthfully. Her anticipatory bail was rejected by a Delhi court, which stressed that the veracity of her claim of non-involvement in the “co-location” scam could not be established and expressed the suspicion that she may have concocted the story of a Siddha Yogi guiding her to conceal her involvement.
“At this stage it couldn't be said prima facie that the role of the present accused was not under scanner. It further appears prima facie that the applicant had introduced an non existing person to misled the investigating agency, which may also prima facie show her connivance in the matter,” special judge Sanjeev Aggarwal had said.
