MP probe reveals a Rs 22,000-cr dabba trade racket

Madhya Pradesh police investigations into the multistate and multisegment 'dabba trade' (illegal, off-exchange trade) racket in commodity futures, unearthed some months earlier, have revealed crores of rupees worth of transactions.

Five people have been arrested; two are absconding. They were passing themselves off as authorised members of the Multi Commodity Exchange, in the name of AU Commodity, Indore. The total transactions might be as high as Rs 22,000 crore, say police.

The enforcement directorate at the Centre is also learnt to have registered a case in the matter.

The five accused, who include two brothers, Amit and Anurag Soni, had allegedly obtained Metatrade Software from a Cyprus-based software company through illegal means from a Dubai-based Indian, Manish Chetwani, who had already filed a complaint to the Indian embassy there. The accused, according to police sources, designed a conspiracy to use the software illegally by creating a company named Skytel Services and hired a server in Noida.

They are said to have registered 162 clients and conducted 12,000 transactions. "They have, primary investigations say, made Rs 1.68 crore illegally from these transactions, said D C Sagar, inspector-general in the criminal investigation department of the state police.  

The state home department had earlier written to the Central Bureau of Investigation to have its office at Bhopal take over the matter from the state CID.

"The state forensic lab is investigating the softwares, transactions and digital communications," a police source told this newspaper. Records of the National Stock Exchange were also found on their impounded server and this is being probed, too.

“Two more servers will spill the beans in the case, they might be either planning to start trading on NSE or have already done similar transactions,” the source said.