FIR order against Madhabi Puri Buch, 5 others: Bombay HC to hear SEBI, BSE appeals on March 4

FIR order against Madhabi Puri Buch, 5 others: Bombay HC to hear SEBI, BSE appeals on March 4

Bombay High Court on March 3 agreed to grant urgent hearing to pleas of SEBI, BSE against FIR order in Cals Refineries case.

High Court issued oral directions restraining registration of FIR till hearing of pleas on March 4, reported CNBC-TV18.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta appeared for SEBI officials, while Senior Advocate Amit Desai represented BSE officials.

A special court in Mumbai had on March 1 directed the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) to register an FIR against former Sebi chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch and five other officials in connection with alleged stock market fraud and regulatory violations.

There is prima facie evidence of regulatory lapses and collusion, requiring a fair and impartial probe, the special ACB court judge, Shashikant Eknathrao Bangar, said in the order passed on Saturday. The court said it will monitor the probe and sought a status report within 30 days.

Apart from Buch, the other officials against whom the court has ordered registration of the FIR are BSE’s Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Sundararaman Ramamurthy, its then chairman and public interest director Pramod Agarwal and Sebi’s three whole time members Ashwani Bhatia, Ananth Narayan G and Kamlesh Chandra Varshney.

The complainant, Sapan Shrivastava (47), who is a media reporter, had sought an investigation into the alleged offences committed by the proposed accused, involving largescale financial fraud, regulatory violations and corruption.

The allegations pertain to the fraudulent listing of a company on the stock exchange with the active connivance of regulatory authorities, particularly the Sebi, without compliance under the SEBI Act, 1992 and rules and regulations thereunder.

The complainant claimed that the Sebi officials failed in their statutory duty, facilitated market manipulation, and enabled corporate fraud by allowing the listing of a company that did not meet the prescribed norms.

In an official statement, the Bombay Stock Exchange said the ACB Court, Mumbai has allowed a miscellaneous application filed before them against certain SEBI officials and ex-chairman of BSE and the current MD &CEO.

The application had sought directions for registration of a FIR and investigations into alleged irregularities in the listing of Cals Refineries Ltd at BSE in 1994. "The officials named in the application were not in their respective positions at the time of listing and were not connected with the company at all," it said.

The SEBI said the application, which sought directions to the police to register an FIR and investigate alleged irregularities in granting listing permission to a company on the Bombay Stock Exchange in 1994, was allowed by the court "even though these officials were not holding their respective positions at the relevant point of time".

India's first woman Sebi chief Buch completed her three-year tenure on Friday.

With inputs from PTI