THE TAP DANCE WAS A TANGO?

How the mighty have fallen.

- Kiran D. Tare

When Sanjay Pandey, then acting Dir­ector General of Police (DGP) of Maharashtra, recommended an FIR against fellow IPS officer Ras­hmi Shukla in an illegal phone­tapping case in December 2021, he would have had a little premonition that a similar scandal would catch up with him. The Enforcement Directorate on July 19 arrested Pandey in connection with the alleged illegal snooping on National Stock Exchange (NSE) em­ployees, seen as potentially a key part of a mega scam. Pandey had retired just days ago as Mumbai police com­ missioner, after a ‘blotless’ career.

At the root of the charges is iSec Services Private Limited, a security audit firm Pandey set up in 2001. The CBI claims that between 2009 and 2017, then NSE managing director Chitra Ramakrishna and vice-chairman Ravi Narain hired iSec to snoop on NSE employees to find out if the victims were leaking exchange-related information. The firm had allegedly received around Rs 4.45 crore as the contract amount. This was also the period of the colocation scam at the NSE.