Supreme Court issues notice in Chitra Ramkrishna's dark fibre case

The Supreme Court on Monday issued notice in the case of former National Stock Exchange (NSE) Chief Executive Officer Chitra Ramkrishna's appeal against the Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT) order partially upholding the Securities and Exchange Board of India's (Sebi) penalty against her in the dark fibre case.

The court has directed Ramkrishna to deposit half of the Rs 25 lakh penalty to stay the operation of the SAT order. The case will likely be heard again in March.

SAT in December last year had quashed an order passed by Sebi against the NSE former top executives Chitra Ramkrishna, Anand Subramanian, and others in the so-called ‘dark fibre’ case, where certain brokers allegedly exploited the exchange’s internet infrastructure to get faster connectivity to its co-location facilities (colo).

The tribunal delivered its judgment in 16 appeals, which were filed against the common order issued by an adjudicating officer (AO) of Sebi in June 2022. The tribunal had in August 2023 overturned an order issued by a Sebi whole-time member (WTM) with similar allegations.

SAT set aside the total penalty of Rs 7 crore imposed on NSE in the Sebi AO order. Further, the penalty on Ramkrishna has been brought down from Rs 5 crore to Rs 25 lakh, while the penalty order of Rs 4 crore on Subramanian by Sebi did not sustain.

However, SAT has imposed a penalty of Rs 25 lakh on Sampark Infotainment, which was an unauthorised vendor for providing Point-to-Point (P2P) connectivity to the stock brokers. The penalty imposed by Sebi was Rs 3 crore, which has been quashed.

The tribunal said that out of the nine charges against NSE in the AO order, seven are the same as those given in the WTM’s order. The remaining two charges have also been quashed in this SAT order.