Moneylife case: two-judge Bench stays penalty on NSE

In the NSE's appeal against the Bombay High Court's ruling regarding its defamation suit against news website Moneylife, a two-judge Bench of the Bombay High Court today stayed the penalty of Rs 50 lakh on the NSE.

Justices Kanade and Phansalkar-Joshi also admitted the NSE's appeal against the earlier ruling and admitted it for hearing in two weeks' time.

Earlier in the case, the Bombay High Court has dismissed NSE’s defamation suit against Moneylife magazine and its publishers. The NSE had filed the suit after Moneylife had published reports alleging that insiders at the stock exchange gave unfair advantage to certain high-frequency (algorithmic) traders.

Justices Kanade and Phansalkar-Joshi also admitted NSE’s appeal against the earlier ruling and slated it for hearing in two weeks’ time. On September 9, Justice Gautam Patel had dismissed NSE’s ₹100-crore suit against the website, observing that the magazine had given the exchange adequate opportunity to defend itself before the articles alleging manipulation at the exchange had been published.

The exchange, however, had chosen not to answer the questions from the magazine.

On June 19, Moneylife published a letter it received from a whistleblower — who works in the technology team of a Singapore-based hedge fund — alleging that the market manipulation taking place at the exchange allowed “certain vested brokers to get market price information ahead of the rest of the market.” A follow-up report by the magazine’s Managing Editor Sucheta Dalal in early July alleged that the senior management at the NSE profited from allowing certain high-frequency traders to play the system while capital markets regulator SEBI has not acted on the whistleblower’s allegations either.

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