The argument was that the National Stock Exchange is a private company, and that its officers therefore cannot be public servants under the anti-corruption statute. The Supreme Court declined to disturb the High Court’s rejection of that argument, leaving the question to be agitated at trial. Nothing has been decided on the allegations themselves.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court has declined to interfere with a Delhi High Court judgment holding that the National Stock Exchange performs a public duty and that its Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer can accordingly be prosecuted under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, observing that whether she was in fact discharging a public duty is a question that can be raised before the Trial Court [Chitra Ramkrishna v. Union of India and Another].
A Bench of Justice J.B. Pardiwala and Justice K. Vinod Chandran disposed of the petition, finding no error in the High Court’s reasoning. The order leaves the prosecution to proceed and decides nothing on the merits of the allegations.
The background
The proceedings arise from the co-location matter, in which the Central Bureau of Investigation has alleged that between 2010 and 2014 certain brokers obtained preferential access to the exchange’s servers. The case was registered in 2018.
According to the charge-sheets, the petitioner facilitated the design of a system that was susceptible to manipulation, permitting that preferential access. The agency has also alleged that she abused her position in connection with the appointment and remuneration of a senior official at the exchange. She was arrested in March 2022 and granted bail by the Delhi High Court in September 2022. The allegations have not been tested at trial and she has not been convicted of anything.
After the trial court took cognisance of the charge-sheets, she moved the High Court seeking to quash the proceedings so far as they rested on the anti-corruption statute.
The argument, and what the High Court made of it
Her case before the High Court went to the root of the prosecution. Officers of the exchange, she contended, could not be treated as public servants because the exchange is a private company, and the statutory definitions of “public duty” and “public servant” were so broad and uncertain as to be unconstitutional when applied to private persons. She separately challenged the sanction for her prosecution, pointing out that the exchange’s Board had expressly clarified that it was not accepting either that its personnel were public servants or that the Act applied to it at all.
A Division Bench of Justice Navin Chawla and Justice Ravinder Dudeja rejected those contentions in July 2026 in a judgment running to some 54 pages. It held that the definition of “public servant” was neither vague nor unconstitutional, that the statute lays down conditions for determining who falls within it, and that every office need not be separately enumerated for the definition to work. A broad formulation, the Bench observed, was necessary if anti-corruption legislation was to serve its purpose.
On the character of the exchange, the High Court held that it is not an ordinary commercial venture but a recognised stock exchange performing vital economic functions in the public interest, including the protection of investors. Since the exchange acts through its officers, the petitioner, as its head during the relevant period, could not be wholly separated from the functions it performs.
On the sanction, the Bench held that the Board’s clarification made the sanction conditional only to the limited extent that the competent court would decide whether she is a public servant and whether the Act applies, and that this was not a ground to set the sanction aside.
Importantly, the High Court did not decide the question against her outright. It held that how far she was in charge of the day-to-day functioning and general policy decisions of the exchange, and whether she was performing a public duty in relation to the specific acts alleged, are matters of evidence for the trial. It added that none of its observations should influence the trial court.
Before the Supreme Court
The petitioner carried the same argument to the Supreme Court, pressing that the exchange is a private, non-governmental company and that its Managing Director cannot on that footing be said to have been discharging a public duty.
The Bench was not persuaded that the High Court had erred. It upheld the observations under challenge and disposed of the petition, recording that the question whether she was performing a public duty remains open to be raised before the Trial Court. The effect is that the prosecution proceeds, with the point preserved rather than foreclosed.
The statutory question
The dispute turns on two definitions. Section 2(b) of the Act defines “public duty” as a duty in the discharge of which the State, the public or the community at large has an interest. Section 2(c) then lists the categories of persons who are public servants, and the clause relied upon here brings in any person who holds an office by virtue of which he is authorised or required to perform a public duty.
Read together, the two provisions make the test functional rather than institutional. What matters is the nature of the duty attached to the office, not whether the employer is a government body. That is why the ownership of the exchange, which was the centre of the petitioner’s argument, did not answer the question.
Why it matters
The functional test is not new, but its reach keeps growing. The Supreme Court has held that officers of private banks fall within the Act, that a trustee of a deemed university does, and that even a licensed stamp vendor does. Each of those decisions rests on the same idea: that the statute follows the duty rather than the payslip. Extending it to the head of a recognised stock exchange is a further step along a line that was already well drawn, and it is a consequential one, because it brings senior executives of market infrastructure institutions within the reach of a statute carrying presumptions and procedures quite different from ordinary criminal law.
There is a real argument on the other side, and it is the one the petitioner made. A definition broad enough to capture anyone whose work the public has an interest in risks capturing a great deal of private commercial activity, and the person so captured faces sanction requirements, special court procedure and statutory presumptions designed for the exercise of state power. The High Court’s answer was that breadth is the price of an effective anti-corruption law and that the statute supplies workable conditions. Whether that balance is correctly struck is a question that will keep returning.
What should not be lost in the reporting is how narrow the present order is. Neither court has held that this petitioner was in fact discharging a public duty in relation to the acts alleged. Both have held that the exchange performs public functions and that the rest is evidence. The regulatory and criminal tracks in this matter have also moved separately and on different material, which is a reminder that a finding in one forum does not determine the other. The trial is where all of it will be decided.
Case Title: Chitra Ramkrishna v. Union of India and Another [SLP (Crl.) No. 16425 of 2026]
Bench: Justice J.B. Pardiwala and Justice K. Vinod Chandran, Supreme Court of India
Date of Order: September 15, 2026
Order Under Challenge: Judgment of the Delhi High Court dated July 9, 2026, by a Division Bench of Justice Navin Chawla and Justice Ravinder Dudeja
Status: Special leave petition disposed of. Prosecution to proceed. No finding recorded on the allegations, and the question of public duty left open for trial.