A day after FTIL promoter Jignesh Shah was arrested and sent to seven-day police custody, the Mumbai High Court has granted bail to former chief executive of NSEL, Anjani Sinha.
The court also granted bail to two others in connection with the ₹5,600-crore scam that hit the exchange in July last year.
Sinha’s lawyers argued that the accused have been framed by the top officials of FTIL (Financial Technologies India Ltd) and that they were fully aware of the “wrongdoings” at NSEL.
Sinha, who is a prime accused in the case, was arrested by the Mumbai Police’s Economic Offence Wing (EOW) on October 17, 2013, along with two other aides Jai Bahukhandi and Amit Mukherjee. All the three accused have been released on a security of ₹5 lakh each.
The court has ordered them to appear before the EOW every Sunday till the matter is resolved. The court had in February rejected the bail plea.
Bahukhandi was Assistant Vice-president of Warehousing, and Mukherjee, Assistant Vice-president of Business Development, at NSEL, which is also a subsidiary of FTIL. Jignesh Shah, along with his family holds 45 per cent in FTIL, which owns 26 per cent in MCX and 99.99 in NSEL. Earlier, SEBI had ordered FTIL to pare its stake in MCX to 2 per cent.
Earlier this month, Anjani Sinha, in a detailed submission to the EOW, had put all the blame on his former boss Jignesh Shah for the problems at NSEL. The 54-page document, signed by Sinha, mentioned that Shah’s intention was to ensure NSEL conducts ‘ vyaj badla ’, a trading practice done on the BSE in the 1980s. However, SEBI had banned the practise in the early 1990s.
Sinha also said that Shah used to look after the day-to- day matters at NSEL and took all the important decisions.