The Central Bureau of Investigation has filed chargesheet in the Designated Court, Delhi against a private company based at New Delhi/Mumbai and others including its then Director; then Senior Information Security Analyst and the officials of NSE i.e., then Executive Vice President; then Head (Premises); then Managing Director; then DMD/Managing Director; then Group Operating Officer; then OSD; then Manager (Premises) etc. in an on-going investigation of a case.
Name of the accused in chargesheet :
M/s. ISEC Services Pvt Ltd, Sanjay Pandey then Director of ISEC, Naman Chaturvedi then Senior Information Security Analyst of ISEC, Jagdish Tukaram Dalvi of ISEC and officials of NSE i.e., Ravi Varanasi, then Executive Vice President, Mahesh Haldipur, then Head (Premises), Ravi Narain then Managing Director and Chitra Ramakrishna, then DMD/Managing Director, Anand Subramanian then Group Operating Officer, S.B. Thosar, then OSD and Bhupesh Mistry, then Manager (Premises).
CBI had registered a case on 07.07.2022 against the said private company and others. During the course of investigation of another case related to Colocation Scam in NSE, an act of illegal interception of landline phones of NSE employees was unearthed.
It was alleged that unauthorised recording & monitoring of personal call lines in NSE started in 1997 when then MD & then DMD/MD of NSE connected call lines of NSE employees to a Digital Voice Recorder provided by a private company. During 1997-2009 then DMD with the help of NSE employees allegedly supervised the interception.
It was further alleged that during 2009, the work for monitoring of calls was given to another/accused private company of Delhi/Mumbai which was started and being run by then Director of said company.
In order to maintain secrecy, the work order was allegedly issued to said private company in the name of “conducting periodic study of Cyber Vulnerabilities”. It was also alleged that during 2012, the said private company purchased and installed 4 X PRI Quad Span Digital Voice Logger at the basement of NSE by splitting the PRI lines of MTNL.
This logger was capable of recording 120 calls simultaneously. The employees of said private company were given unauthorised access to NSE premises in a manner to listen to these calls and submit weekly reports to NSE officials-then Executive Vice President and then Head (Premises). The reports in turn were being shown on regular basis to then MD & then DMD/MD of NSE. The work order of said private company was renewed every year from 2009-2017.
It was found during investigation that an accused (then Director of accused private company) working as Police officer was allegedly managing the affairs of said company. The NSE ended up paying Rs 4.54 crore (approx.) in 8 years to said private company for carrying out such illegal interception of NSE employees in the name of cyber vulnerability study.
The call records of hundreds of NSE employees were allegedly kept in the custody of said private company and the entire interception was done without the knowledge or consent of NSE board and NSE employees.
During investigation, CBI had arrested the then Director of said private company, then MD & then DMD/MD of NSE.
