Winning Bizness Desk

Mumbai. The Enforcement Directorate has arrested Ravi Narain, the former chief executive officer and managing director of the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE), in the co-location case involving the bourse.

The anti-money laundering agency had registered a case against him, along with ex-NSE chief Chitra Ramakrishna and former Mumbai Police Commissioner Sanjay Pandey under criminal sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) on July 14.

Conspired to cheat NSE

This was preceded by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) booking the trio for allegedly tapping phones of NSE employees between 2009 and 2017. Narain's arrest comes a week after ED's Special Public Prosecutor N K Matta told a Delhi court that he, along with other accused, conspired to cheat NSE and its employees. They engaged with iSEC Services Pvt Ltd - the firm linked to Pandey - for illegal interception of phone calls of the exchange's employees in the guise of periodic study of cyber vulnerabilities of NSE, Matta was reported as saying before the bench.

Headed NSE from 1994 to 2013

Narain was the chief of NSE from 1994 to 2013, and Chitra subsequently headed the bourse between 2013 and 2016. The co-location scam, in which both are listed as accused, refers to the case in which the then NSE brass are accused of providing a bunch of high frequency traders unfair access to speed up algorithmic trading. The ED action against Narain was preceded by the arrest of Ramakrishna, who was first held by the agency on March 6 in the co-location case, and was later arrested by the CBI on July 14 in the phone-tapping case.