ED summons IPS officer Sanjay Pandey 3 days after retirement

Mumbai: Barely three days after he retired as Mumbai police commissioner, IPS officer Sanjay Pandey has been issued a summons by the Enforcement Directorate to appear at its Delhi office in connection with a money laundering case at 11.30 am on July 5.

Though ED refused to reveal the case for which Pandey had been summoned, First India has reliably learnt that it is in connection with the co-location scam at the National Stock Exchange. Pandey, a 1986-batch IPS officer, had tried to leave the IPS in frustration after he was repeatedly sidelined by Maharashtra’s political establishment following his investigations into money siphoned off by politicians from leather cooperative societies in the mid-1990s. He had then floated an IT company in 2001, but he turned to the Maharashtra police after 15 months or so.

His firm, ISec Services Pvt. Ltd, remained operational with his son and mother at the helm, and was awarded a contract to audit NSE servers after 2010. Sources said the ED wants to question Pandey’s regarding this. The CBI has been investigating the co-locawtion scam where certain trading companies were given co-location facility to access information on NSE servers as a result of which they could get faster access to market information and make windfall profits.

However, sources say Pandey’s company had a turnover of just Rs5 crore at its peak, and has a turnover of Rs1 crore now. The IPS officer’s son is now based in the US and the company is virtually on the verge of closure. The timing of the summons has raised eyebrows, especially since Pandey has been seen as an upright IPS officer right through his career. He had been out of favour in political circles, until the arrest of MVA Home Minister Anil Deshmukh and officer Sachin Vaze. He was then appointed Mumbai CP in a bid to restore faith in the police. Pandey used Twitter effectively to connect with Mumbaikars, and acted upon several of their suggestions. He has also found himself unwittingly in the cross-fire between the BJP and the MVA government on several occasions.