Income-tax dept conducts searches at Chitra Ramkrishna’s residence

“The IT officials are at her residence in Mumbai,” said a person familiar with the matter.

The tax department is conducting the searches on the allegation that she made illegal gains when she passed on internal exchange information of an unknown third person, this person said.

This search comes in the backdrop of a Sebi order passed on 11 February where the regulator found serious lapses in the governance and ethical conduct of the former chief executive of NSE, Chitra Ramkrishna.

Sebi in its order had found that Ramkrishna was sharing confidential information relating to the exchange with an unknown third person who went as ‘rigyajursama’ and imposed a fine of Rs.3 crore on her.

“The sharing of financial and business plans of NSE is a glaring, if not unimaginable act, that could shake the very foundations of the stock exchange,” the regulator’s order said.

The other serious lapse was in the appointment of Anand Subramanian, as chief operating officer without clearing it from the nomination and remuneration committee (NRC) in breach of regulatory norms.

According to the Sebi order, this was a “glaring conspiracy of a money-making scheme” involving Ramkrishna and Subramanian, along with the unknown guru.

This is the second income tax probe against Ramkrishna. The first was back in November 2017, in connection with the so-called co-location scam.

The income tax department’s team in Delhi and Mumbai had conducted searches on the premises of stockbrokers and former and current officials of NSE to verify the extent of illegal gains made by few brokers who gained preferential access to NSE’s high-speed algorithmic trading (algo-trading) platform.