Bombay High Court: A Single Judge Bench of Shivkumar Dige, J., stayed the order of a special court to register FIR against former SEBI Chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch and other SEBI and Bombay Stock Exchange (‘BSE’) officials in connection with a listing fraud case. The Court stayed the order for four weeks and stated that the order by the special court was passed mechanically without going into the details and without attributing any specific role to the accused persons.
A challenge was made to the order of the Special Court wherein the Anti-Corruption Bureau (‘ACB’) was directed to register an FIR against Madhabi Puri Buch and five others including SEBI’s whole-time members Ashwani Bhatia, Ananth Narayan G, and Kamlesh Chandra Varshney, and BSE officials Pramod Agarwal and Sundararaman Ramamurthy, in connection with alleged irregularities in the 1994 listing of a company on the BSE.
The Special Court had observed that there was prima facie evidence of regulatory lapses and collusion, requiring a fair and impartial probe and the inaction by law enforcement and SEBI necessitated judicial intervention under Section 156(3)1 of the Criminal Procedure Code, 1973.
Source: Press
Buy Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 HERE
1. Corresponding Section 175(3) of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023
