NSE phone tapping case: ED gets 9-day custody of ex-Mumbai top cop Sanjay Pandey

A Delhi court on Wednesday sent former Mumbai Police Commissioner Sanjay Pandey to 9-day ED custody in connection with a money laundering case linked to the alleged illegal phone tapping of NSE employees, reported news agency PTI.

On Tuesday, the retired 1986-batch Indian Police Service (IPS) officer was taken into custody by the federal probe agency after more than seven hours of questioning in the case.

Before getting arrested, Pandey had met Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, who is in Delhi. He has earlier been questioned by the agency in another case booked by it to probe alleged co-location scam at the NSE on July 5.

The ED had last week arrested former NSE MD and CEO Chitra Ramkrishna in the case and had recently told the court that the ''snooping of phone calls'' at the NSE was being done from 1997. Pandey's company under scanner in this case was set up in March, 2001.

Transaction of funds worth about Rs 12 crore allegedly to Pandey and his company are under the scanner of the agency.

Pandey, who studied at the IIT Kanpur and Harvard University, retired from service, while holding the post of Mumbai's Commissioner of Police, on June 30, a charge he held for four-months. He was appointed to the post by the MVA government headed by former Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray.

Pandey briefly served as the acting Maharashtra director general of police or the head of the state police force.

The retired top cop is facing two ED and CBI FIRs -- the alleged phone tapping case and violation of Securities and Exchange Board of India guidelines in conducting NSE's system audit. While the ED case (in the alleged phone tapping instance) is based on the CBI FIR, it was the ED that first detected the alleged snooping of phone lines at the bourse while probing the co-location instance and it informed the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) which asked the CBI to study ED findings and probe further. As the ED cannot file a criminal complaint under the PMLA on its own, the CBI case became a scheduled offence enabling it to file a money laundering case.

The retired IPS officer's role is being probed in connection with a company founded by him, which the CBI and ED allege, has violated SEBI norms in auditing two NSE stock brokers who were using the scam-tainted co-location facility.

(With inputs from PTI)