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Central Bureau of Investigation vs. Sanjay Pandey and connected matters

Criminal Miscellaneous Case · CNR No. DLHC010140592023Decided 23 Sept 2026New Delhi Bench
CRL.M.C. 2749/2023, CRL.M.C. 2751/2023CNR: DLHC010140592023
Justice Madhu Jain

Background

This case is part of the well-known National Stock Exchange (NSE) phone-tapping scandal. The CBI alleged that Sanjay Pandey, a retired IPS officer who had founded the security firm iSEC Services, continued to informally control iSEC even after formally leaving it, and that iSEC, engaged by NSE under the guise of a "Periodic Study of Cyber Vulnerabilities", actually intercepted and recorded NSE employees' phone calls without authorisation, receiving about Rs. 4.54 crore for this work. After his bail was rejected by the trial court, a coordinate bench of the High Court granted him bail in the connected Enforcement Directorate (money-laundering) case; the trial court then relied on that ruling to also grant him bail in the CBI's separate case. The CBI challenged that grant of bail before the High Court, arguing the trial court had wrongly copied the ED-case reasoning without independently assessing CBI's own evidence.

Decision Breakdown

The High Court held that while the CBI and ED cases are legally distinct, both arose from the very same FIR and factual allegations regarding the NSE-iSEC phone-tapping arrangement, so it was legitimate, not "abdication of jurisdiction", for the trial court to consider the earlier bail ruling as relevant background, so long as it did not treat it as binding or a complete substitute for independent reasoning. On reviewing the trial court's actual bail order, the High Court found it had expressly recorded and considered the CBI's objections (that CBI was not a party to the ED bail case, and that the CBI's own status report had been filed in a separate quashing petition) before ultimately granting bail, so there was no failure of independent judicial application of mind. The CBI's petition was accordingly dismissed.

Lesson Learnt

When two different agencies (like the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate) investigate the same underlying facts under different laws, a bail order in one case is not binding on the other, but a court deciding bail in the second case may still take note of a related court's assessment of the same facts, provided it also independently weighs the specific case and objections before it, rather than mechanically copying the earlier order.

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