Supreme Court rejects ex-NSE chief Chitra Ramkrishna's 'public duty' plea in co-location case

New Delhi: Rejecting former National Stock Exchange (NSE) managing director and CEO Chitra Ramkrishna's appeal, the Supreme Court on Tuesday paved the way for a Delhi court to proceed with the co-location case against her under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988.

Upholding the Delhi High Court's July 9 decision that ruled against Ramkrishna, a bench of Justices JB Pardiwala and K Vinod Chandran said that the high court had committed no error in its judgment. "The petitioner (Ramkrishna) was the MD and CEO of NSE. The argument is that NSE being a private, or non-government company, it cannot be said that the petitioner was discharging a public duty. We are of the view that this point can be raised in the course of the trial. Let this issue be decided by the trial court on its own merits."

While rejecting her petition challenging the definitions of 'public duty' and 'public servant' under the PC Act, the HC in July had said that the exchange performs a public duty and Ramkrishna, holding the office of the MD and CEO, cannot be wholly separated from the functions performed by the NSE and, therefore, equally performs a function and duty in which the public at large is invested. The HC had also rejected Ramkrishna's plea challenging the sanction order issued by the exchange's board to the Central Bureau of Investigation to prosecute her in the co-location case under the PC Act.


Ramkrishna had submitted that the definitions of public duty and public servant were too expansive and had been enlarged to charge people who were not public servants but privately employed people like her. NSE is a company registered under the Companies Act and yet she had been categorised as a public servant, she argued.

Ramkrishna, who headed the NSE between 2013 and 2016, has been charged with illegal gratification through abuse of position and criminal conspiracy, among other offences. The irregularities in the case had purportedly taken place between 2010 and 2014. In April 2022, the CBI framed charges against Ramkrishna under Sections of 13(1)(d) and 13(2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, and 120(b) of the Indian Penal Code.

While Section 13(1)(d) of the prevention of corruption law deals with illegal enrichment by a public servant through abuse of her authority, Section 13 (2) says that an official can be sentenced up to seven years for such an offence.

The NSE co-location case is related to the alleged improper dissemination of information from computer servers of the exchange to stockbrokers. The agency had alleged that Ramkrishna had granted selected stockbrokers access to sensitive market data, and that data centre staff of the exchange passed on information to unauthorised people at the time when servers of the exchange were switched on.