Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on Monday asked the Maharashtra ACB not to act until March 4 on an order directing it to lodge an FIR against former SEBI chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch and five other officials for alleged stock market fraud and regulatory violations.

Buch, Bombay Stock Exchange MD Sundararaman Ramamurthy and the others moved the HC on Monday, seeking to

quash the March 1 order passed by a special court in Mumbai directing the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) to register an FIR against them pertaining to certain allegations of fraud committed in 1994 while listing a company on the BSE.

The pleas were mentioned before a single bench of Justice S G Dige for urgent hearing. The bench said it would hear the pleas on Tuesday and orally added that until then, the state ACB, which was directed to probe the case, shall not act upon the special court order.

During the hearing, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta appeared for the three current whole-time SEBI directors - Ashwani Bhatia, Ananth Narayan G and Kamlesh Chandra Varshney. Senior counsel Amit Desai appeared for Bombay Stock Exchange's Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Ramamurthy and its former chairman and public interest director Pramod Agarwal. The pleas sought quashing of the special court order, terming it as illegal and arbitrary.