Anand Subramanian was first appointed as Chief Strategic Adviser in the NSE in 2013
The mysterious "Himalayan yogi" who allegedly influenced the decisions of former National Stock Exchange (NSE) chief Chitra Ramkrishna has been outed as Anand Subramanian, the former officer arrested in a stock market manipulation case.
Anand Subramanian, the former Chief Operating Officer of the NSE, was the "yogi" who communicated with Chitra Ramkrishna through email, CBI sources said today.
His controversial appointment was one of the decisions that Chitra Ramkrishna took under the so-called yogi's influence, market regulator SEBI (Securities and Exchange Board of India) had said in a report.
Anand Subramanian was revealed to be the yogi through an email id, the CBI says. The agency said it had evidence that Subramanian created the mail id rigyajursama@outlook.com.
Chitra Ramakrishna shared confidential information related to the NSE from her mail id rchitra@icloud.com to rigyajursama@outlook.com between 2013 and 2016, said the CBI sources.
Some of these mails were reportedly also marked to another mail id of Anand Subramanian. Screenshots of these mails have been recovered from the mail ids of Subramanian, the sources said.
Subramanian was questioned by the CBI for four days last week. He was arrested last night around 11 PM in Chennai.
"Subramanian didn't cooperate with the questioning; he gave evasive answers," said the CBI sources.
Subramanian was first appointed as Chief Strategic Adviser in the NSE in 2013 and then promoted as Group Operating Officer in 2015 by Chitra Ramkrishna. In 2016, he left NSE over allegations of irregularities.
Chitra Ramkrishna is under investigation for allegedly sharing confidential information with the "yogi", who now turns out to be her aide.
Subramanian's appointment and the "frequent, arbitrary and disproportionate" hikes in his salary without any evidence of a performance evaluation was part of a damning SEBI report on the market manipulation case.
SEBI has charged Chitra Ramkrishna and others with alleged governance lapses in the appointment of Subramanian and his outsized promotion.
Ms Ramkrishna's response to SEBI on her bizarre dependence on the faceless yogi was part of the regulator's report.
SEBI noted, based on the emails, that Ms Ramkrishna met this person "several times in 2015". She headed the stock exchange from 2013 to 2016.
Ms Ramkrishna also told SEBI that the email she corresponded with was operated by a "Sidhha Purusha/yogi who maybe largely dwelling in the Himalayan ranges".
"I have met him on occasions in holy places. No locational co-ordinates are given," she told the regulator.
When she was asked how, living in the Himalayas, the yogi could have accessed emails and corresponded regularly. "To the best of my knowledge, their spiritual powers do not require them to have any such physical co-ordinates," she replied.
Calling him a "spiritual force", she told SEBI: "I met Him for the first time on the banks of the Ganges nearly 20 years ago directly. Subsequently, over the years I have taken his guidance on many personal and professional matters. Along the way, since He would manifest at will and I did not have any locational co-ordinates I requested Him for a way in which I could seek His guidance whenever I felt the need. Accordingly, He gave me an id on which I could send my requests."