The Bombay High Court on Tuesday ordered a four-week stay on the special court’s directive to register an FIR against former Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch, along with five other officials.
The stay was granted by Justice Shivkumar Dige, who noted that the special court’s order was passed in a mechanical manner without examining the details or attributing any specific roles to the accused.
This decision came after a complaint by Sapan Shrivastava, a media reporter, alleging large-scale financial fraud, regulatory violations, and corruption related to an incident in 1994 involving the listing of a company on the Bombay Stock Exchange.
The accused include three current whole-time SEBI directors—Ashwani Bhatia, Ananth Narayan G, and Kamlesh Chandra Varshney—as well as two BSE officials, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Ramamurthy, and former chairman and public interest director Pramod Agarwal.
The High Court has granted Sapan Shrivastava four weeks to file an affidavit in response to the petitions filed by the accused, who have sought to quash the special court’s order.
