Sebi exonerates Ravi Narain, 8 other officials in NSE 'dark fibre' case

It was alleged that Sampark provided latency advantage to a few brokers, which resulted in a substantial increase in their turnover during the period from April-August 2015

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) on Thursday exonerated nine current and former officials of the National Stock Exchange (NSE), including former chief Ravi Narain, in the so-called ‘dark fibre’ controversy at the exchange, which allegedly provided unfair advantage to certain brokers.

The capital markets regulator stated that it didn’t “find any evidence or any material that establishes or even remotely indicates any role played by any of the noticees, as far as establishment of P2P connectivity by ‘Sampark’ is concerned”.

In May 2019, Sebi had penalised the NSE as well as two of its former heads —