Ex-NSE CEO Chitra Ramkrishna grilled by CBI over ‘yogi’ scandal

New Delhi: After having issued a lookout notice earlier, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has now formally questioned former Managing Director (MD) and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) Chitra Ramkrishna. She was questioned for twelve hours in connection with the NSE co-location case.

An FIR in the case was registered earlier, but according to sources, the CBI decided to question her directly after new facts emerged. Lookout notices have also been issued against the former Chief Operating Officer (COO) Anand Subramanian and Ramkrishna’s predecessor Ravi Narain, to prevent them from absconding from the country.

Chitra Ramkrishna was the CEO and MD of the NSE from 2013 to 2016, before she resigned from her post citing “personal reasons”. She is currently being probed for a “glaring breach” of regulations involving sharing confidential financial data with a ‘yogi’ dwelling in the Himalayas. Among other things, she had claimed that the yogi directly influenced the appointment of Subramanian by “guiding” her in that direction.

Also read: India’s school uniform makers back in business after Covid slump

The ‘tick by tick’ case was registered against he managing director of OPG Securities Pvt. Ltd. Sanjay Gupta and others for allegedly abusing the server architecture of the NSE, in collusion with unknown officials of the NSE, to gain unfair access to financial data of the stock market.

The CBI has also booked and probed unidentified officials of the NSE and the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) in connection with allegations of stock market manipulation from 2010 to 2014.

Ramkrishna and others were also raided by the Income Tax Department to ascertain possible financial mismanagement or appropriation of funds.

The yogi was running the NSE and Ramkrishna was merely a “puppet”, the SEBI has claimed. Ramkrishna, however, now claims that the information-sharing did not compromise the operations of the NSE whatsoever.

Agencies