SEBI v. National Stock Exchange of India and others (co-location collusion charge, remand order, 2024)
Dismissed
Checked against the primary document on October 9, 2026. The library's summary, tags and figures for this record were compared with the regulator's own document by an AI model (Claude) following written instructions, in a single reading of the order; an independent second reading of 60 SEBI records agreed on every field for 56, the four misses being penalty amounts; a later sample of 50 of the SEBI records added on 9 October agreed on every field for 46. No lawyer has reviewed them. A checked record can still contain errors, and checked does not mean endorsed. See how we check records or report a correction.
In September 2024 a SEBI whole-time member reconsidered, on remand from the Securities Appellate Tribunal, whether the National Stock Exchange and former senior officials colluded with the broker OPG Securities over its use of a secondary co-location server. He found collusion not established and disposed of the proceedings without any direction.
The record
| Agency | SEBI (India) |
|---|---|
| Date filed | 2024-09-13 |
| Date resolved | 2024-09-13 |
| Court | SEBI whole-time member |
| Status | dismissed |
| Asset class | equities |
| Instruments | NSE-listed securities |
| Venue | NSE |
| Criminal parallel | No |
| Defendants | National Stock Exchange of India Limited ; Ravi Narain ; Chitra Ramkrishna ; Anand Subramanian ; Ravindra Apte ; Umesh Jain ; Mahesh Soparkar ; Devi Prasad Singh |
| Also named elsewhere | National Stock Exchange of India Limited |
| Techniques |
What was ordered
- Civil penalty
- —
- Disgorgement
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- Prejudgment interest
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- Total relief
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- Alleged gain
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What is alleged to have happened
This order of 13 September 2024 was passed by a SEBI whole-time member on the same day as the companion order against the broker OPG Securities. It concerns the National Stock Exchange of India and seven current or former officials, among them Ravi Narain and Chitra Ramkrishna. In 2023 the Securities Appellate Tribunal had affirmed that OPG breached the PFUTP Regulations by unilaterally logging on to a secondary server in the exchange's co-location facility, but had found no PFUTP or intermediary-regulation violation by the exchange and its staff, and told SEBI to look again at whether OPG and its directors acted in collusion or connivance with them.
SEBI's renewed show cause notice put that question to the exchange and the officials. The order works through many preliminary objections, including natural justice, res judicata, whether the exchange could be a party, and whether pending appeals stopped the proceeding.
On the merits the order accepts that the exchange had no detailed written policy on use of the co-location facility and did not monitor use of the secondary server, which it calls a lack of due diligence by a first-level regulator. It also notes that OPG kept logging on to the secondary server until May 2015 after a warning in mid-2012, which suggests indirect consent. But it points out that 93 trading members used that server in the period, that several external reviews found no direct or indirect evidence of collusion, and that the only new material, a 2023 Indian School of Business report, did not bear on collusion.
The order concludes that collusion or connivance is not established on a preponderance of probability and disposes of the proceedings against all noticees without any direction. No penalty, disgorgement or restraint is imposed.
The record does not show whether SEBI appealed the outcome, and the order itself notes that SEBI's earlier appeal to the Supreme Court against the 2023 Tribunal order was pending when it was written.
This library has no technique that fits unequal access to exchange data, so the matter is tagged with none. The tagging is ours, not the regulator's.
For the regulator's own account of the facts, read the primary document linked above. This page deliberately summarises the structured record rather than reproducing the order.
Timeline
- 2024-09-13 SEBI order
Primary documents
Everything on this page derives from the documents below. Where our summary and the primary document disagree, the primary document is right.