New Delhi, July 19 After being quizzed by the CBI in the National Stock Exchange (NSE) co-location case, senior journalist Sucheta Dalal said that she was asked questions about Ken Fong's four letters.
Dalal appeared before the probe agency on July 16 and got her statement recorded. Her name had cropped up during the course of investigation into the scam.
(In an report dated July 18, it was erroneously mentioned that Sucheta Dalal was questioned by the ED instead of the CBI)
In her statement to the media, Dalal said she has told everything to the CBI, adding that CBI SP Abhinav Khare and Pushpal Paul had contacted her to seek information about the case.
"Just before the New Delhi meeting, I was told that they wanted to record my statement before Pushpal Paul. On asking Mr Khare, he told me that it was about 'Ken Fong'. This is the name used by the whistleblower.
"Indeed, most of the questions asked by the CBI were about Ken Fong's four letters. I had carried all the four letters posted by Ken Fong to me from two different countries and showed the CBI copies of my emails to SEBI. I was asked if I knew who Ken Fong was. I do not know who he is and I said so emphatically. I was also asked about the process which we followed before writing the article and the decision to publish it. And whether I had asked to visit the NSE before writing the article," Dalal said in her statement.
She said that the CBI asked her if she knew Sanjay Pandey, the former Commissioner of Police, whose firm iSec Services Pvt Ltd is under the scanner to which she replied in the affirmative.
"But I said that I had nothing to do with his business. The CBI asked me if I knew Ravi Narain, the former Managing Director of the NSE. I said that I knew him," read the statement issued by Dalal.
She said that she told the investigators that she couldn't recall whether she introduced Pandey to Narain.
"I said that I did not see why NSE or Ravi Narain would need a recommendation from me, when the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) had asked Mr Pandey to investigate the National Securities Depository Ltd (NSDL) in 2005. NSDL is a subsidiary of NSE. Later NSE itself had asked him to be part of an investigation committee with regard to a trading glitch," she said.
Sucheta Dalal can be called again to join the probe, said sources.
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