After the arrest of former NSE group operating officer (GOO) Anand Subramanian in Chennai last night in a 2018 stock market manipulation case, former CBI special director NR Wassan said for such cases, police should be given help of technical and legal experts for the investigation.
The NSE co-location case relates to country’s biggest bourse providing some high frequency traders unfair access to speed up algorithmic trading.
The officer, who probed and supervised various cases, including the Harshad Mehta scam, Indian Bank scam and Bofors scam, told News18 that such cases require specialised knowledge and the accused are capable of executing a scam within milliseconds.
“The working of stock exchanges is complex. One has to understand trading, loopholes, etc. Police officers are generally not equipped to understand and unravel these complicated transactions,” Wassan said. “So any police officer would require the assistance of stock market experts. In other countries, they have a team of officers, including a prosecutor, because you need legal knowledge on the kind of evidence admissible in court. The team includes cyber experts to save technical evidence and ensure that the integrity of seized data is maintained,” he said.
“If a computer is 6,000 km away or 3,000 km away, information could take time to travel. It may take a few milliseconds, but in many cases like the coal scam, the accused took the benefit of this gap. Now, this can’t be unearthed by a police officer and has to be done by a technical expert, who can not only establish it scientifically, but also explain to the satisfaction of the court what actually transpired,” he said.
The officer also said the Harshad Mehta scam was different as he held no position. In this case, a group of top officials are accused of manipulation, he said.
Subramanian was the chief strategic advisor from April 1, 2013. Later, he was re-designated as group operating officer (GOO) and advisor to Chitra Ramakrishna, when she was the managing director (MD) and chief executive officer (CEO) of NSE from April 1, 2015 to October 21, 2016.
The CBI earlier questioned Subramanian for three days, ending February 21. The federal police also interrogated Ramakrishna and former chief operating officer Ravi Narain in the scam.
Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) flagged the case in 2018. Following the report, the Income Tax Department searched the residences of Ramkrishna and Subramanian as part of its probe.
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