Veteran business journalist under CBI probe in NSE illegal snooping case

A senior business journalist is under Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) lens for his alleged involvement in the National Stock Exchange (NSE) co-location case.

A senior business journalist has come under the scanner of Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in the National Stock Exchange (NSE) co-location case involving its former chief, Chitra Ramakrishna, Ravi Narain and former Mumbai Police Commissioner, Sanjay Pandey.

Sources have told India Today that the role of the journalist surfaced when the CBI was probing the contract given to a firm linked to Sanjay Pandey and the alleged snooping on certain people.

Sources added that the CBI has come across evidence suggesting illegal snooping by Sanjay Pandey.

During its probe, the CBI has recovered payment receipts to a company backed by Sanjay Pandey, voice samples of recordings, original transcripts of the recordings, and servers along with two laptops from the premises of iSec Services Pvt Ltd, a firm linked to Sanjay Pandey, containing incriminating evidence of phone tapping on four MTNL lines, with each line accommodating 30 calls at a time.

According to sources, former NSE heads Chitra Ramakrishna and Ravi Narain roped in a private firm to illegally snoop on NSE employees. CBI suspects that the duo wanted to find out if the employees were discussing or leaking exchange-related information.

Sanjay Pandey-backed company iSec Services, sources added, received around Rs 4.45 crore as a contract amount. The alleged snooping took place from 2009 to 2017, coincidentally, the period when the co-location scam took place. The snooping machine was later disposed of as e-waste by the NSE.

The journalist under scanner, sources added, helped Sanjay Pandey get a contract for illegal snooping. The CBI suspects that the journalist was aware of the nature of the work. Still, the journalist under scanner approached the highest authorities in NSE to make sure that Pandey’s firm got contracts.