Former Mumbai Commissioner of Police Sanjay Pandey was arrested on Tuesday evening by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in Delhi in connection with the money-laundering case linked to the alleged illegal phone tapping of NSE employees. Pandey is the second high-profile person to have been arrested by ED in the case after former Managing Director of NSE Chitra Ramkrishna.
Pandey will be produced before the court on Wednesday where ED would seek his remand for custodial interrogation.
A 1986-batch officer, Pandey retired from service on June 30. Before his four-month stint as Mumbai's Commissioner of Police, he served as the acting Maharashtra Director General of Police.
According to the agency sources, Pandey was placed under arrest after he could not give a satisfactory response to some questions pertaining to the case.
The agency wanted to get more specific details about the monetary details of M/s iSEC Services Pvt Ltd company founded by him and its role in the money phone tapping case.
Pandey had appeared before the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in Delhi on Monday as well and was questioned for nearly three hours.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had recently registered a case against M/s iSEC Services Pvt Ltd on a reference from the Ministry of Home Affairs in connection with the alleged illegal interception of telephones of NSE employees carried out by its top management in collusion with iSEC from 2009-2017.
The CBI had also alleged that the transcripts of these calls were provided by M/s iSEC Services Pvt Ltd and received by senior officials of the NSE. Nearly Rs 4.45 crore was allegedly paid to the company.
The agencies are also probing if the phones of 91 NSE employees were allegedly tapped by M/s iSec Services Pvt Ltd.
Pandey is facing two ED and CBI probes related to the alleged illegal interception of phones of NSE employees by M/s iSEC Services Private Limited, a company founded by him, and alleged violation of Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) guidelines in conducting the NSE’s system audit.
On July 05, Pandey had appeared before the ED in Delhi for enquiries in another money laundering case linked to the alleged NSE co-location scam.
The CBI officials on Monday had questioned Pandey and another former Mumbai top cop Param Bir Singh in connection with the corruption cases related to former Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh.
