mumbai markets regulator sebi on wednesday slapped a penalty of rs 7 crore on the nse indias largest stock exchange for irregularities in the dark fibre server colocation case in that decadeold case select brokers were given preference to use highspeed optical fibre lines to connect to the bourses trading servers to get data ahead of others and make huge illegal profitssebi also fined rs 5 crore each chitra ramkrishna a former managing director of the nse anand subramanian its former chief business officer an adviser to ramkrishna and ravi varanasi the exchanges current business development officer in total 18 entities were fined with the aggregate amount at rs 44 croreamong the 18 people nagendra kumar s r v s and deviprasad singh along with varanasi are still with the nse sources said in addition to several former and current nse officials two brokers way2wealth brokers and gkn securities and sampark infotainment a software vendor that operated within nse premises without proper permission were also fined by sebiin 2008 the nse had decided to allow its members brokers access to its trading servers through highspeed optical fibre cables so that they could get trading data faster christened colocation colo facility this is a global practice that was adopted by the nse for traders and investors in the indian markethowever between 2009 and 2016 a few nse officials connived with some brokers and software vendors to set up a system that allowed preferential access to these brokers at that time the system was such that whoever logged into the servers first got the data first sampark infotainment the technology vendor with deep connections with nse officials played an important role in setting up this system since a select few brokers got the trading data ahead of all others they employed highspeed computers to profit from it however some traders notably one unnamed singaporebased trader complained to sebi about this supported by trading datasebi had received some other complaints also