The former Group Operating Officer (GOO) of National Stock Exchange (NSE), Anand Subramanian, will have to stay in jail as the CBI special court rejected his bail application in the co-location scam case on Thursday.

He was arrested by the CBI on February 24, and was remanded to custodial interrogation. He was sent to 14-day judicial custody on March 9. The CBI counsel said Subramanian, who impersonated as the Himalayan Yogi to influence NSE’s former MD and CEO Chitra Ramkrishna and remained evasive during interrogation, was a flight risk and should not be granted bail.

Subramanian’s lawyer had sought his release on bail on the ground that he was not named in the FIR, and had no role in the NSE co-location facility, while specifically denying the allegation that he was the Himalayan Yogi. On March 9, the court had pulled up the CBI for the tardy investigation in the case, saying that the magnitude of the case “will be big” and that the reputation of the country was at stake.

The FIR in the NSE co-location scam was registered in 2018 for the alleged commission of offences under sections 204 (destruction of document or electronic evidence) and 120B (conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code, as well as violation of the provisions of the Information Technology Act and Prevention of Corruption Act.

In the co-location facility offered by the NSE, brokers could place their servers within the stock exchange premises, giving them faster access to the markets. It is alleged by the investigating agency that some brokers, in connivance with insiders, abused the algorithm and the co-location facility to make windfall profits.

The CBI has also arrested Ramkrishna in the case. The agency alleged that Ramkrishna, along with Subramanian, abused her official position as the MD of NSE and got him appointed as her Chief Strategic Advisor/ Consultant by creating this post of Chief Strategic Advisor to accommodate and appoint him bypassing the prescribed due procedures at NSE.

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