SEBI v. Raj Kumar Agarwal (insider trading, RHI Magnesita India, dismissed, 2026)

Dismissed

✓ Checked against the primary document on October 8, 2026. The library's summary, tags and figures for this record were compared with the regulator's own document by an AI model (Claude) following written instructions, in a single reading of the order; an independent second reading of 60 SEBI records agreed on every field for 56, the four misses being penalty amounts; a later sample of 50 of the SEBI records added on 9 October agreed on every field for 46. No lawyer has reviewed them. A checked record can still contain errors, and checked does not mean endorsed. See how we check records or report a correction.

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In July 2026 a SEBI adjudicating officer found that SEBI had not shown that the promoter of a refractory company, which sold its business to RHI Magnesita India, held inside information about RHI's planned acquisition of Dalmia OCL when he traded RHI shares in 2022. The insider trading charge was held not established and no penalty was imposed.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

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Alleged gain

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A dash means the release did not state a figure we could extract, not that the figure is zero. Penalty and disgorgement are stored separately so aggregates across the library do not double-count the same dollars.

What is alleged to have happened

The adjudication order of 7 July 2026 concerns Raj Kumar Agarwal, promoter and director of the unlisted Hi-Tech Chemicals Limited. RHI Magnesita India Ltd. (RHI), a company listed on the BSE and NSE, bought the refractory business of Hi-Tech Chemicals under a business transfer agreement dated 18 October 2022, which was announced to the exchanges the next day. The adjudicating officer is a SEBI officer in Mumbai.

SEBI's investigation, started from internal alerts on insider trading, covered 8 July to 19 December 2022. The show-cause notice of 10 April 2026 alleged that, because of the continuing work on the transfer, Mr Agarwal had access to unpublished price-sensitive information about RHI's proposed acquisition of Dalmia OCL Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Dalmia Bharat Refractories Limited, and traded RHI shares while holding it, in breach of regulation 4(1) of the PIT Regulations and liable for a penalty under section 15G.

The order examines the contacts between Mr Agarwal and RHI personnel, a VoIP call of 8 November 2022 and the travel of senior RHI officials to Delhi, and his trading pattern. It finds that contacts were expected given the post-signing work, that no evidence shows what was said on the call or that the purpose of the travel was disclosed to him, that no one is alleged to have passed him the information, and that his explanation and financial capacity made the trades consistent with ordinary investment.

The adjudicating officer concludes that the circumstances do not form a complete chain permitting the inference that he held the information even on a balance of probabilities, and so he is not an insider under the PIT Regulations and the allegation is not established. The notice was disposed of without penalty or other direction.

The record does not show any SEBI appeal. It describes no criminal case. As a dismissal, the allegation remains an allegation only.

This library tags the matter as insider trading. The tagging is ours, not the regulator's.

For the regulator's own account of the facts, read the primary document linked above. This page deliberately summarises the structured record rather than reproducing the order.

What technique is this, and how does it work?

This action is tagged with one technique in our taxonomy. The tagging is ours: regulators charge statutory provisions, not technique names, so the mapping is an editorial judgement described in our editorial policy.

• Insider trading — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2026-07-07 SEBI adjudication order disposing of the notice

Primary documents

Everything on this page derives from the documents below. Where our summary and the primary document disagree, the primary document is right.

• SEBI order
• SEBI order (PDF)

The linked release is published by the issuing regulator under its own terms. Our summary and narrative above are our own writing.

Related actions

Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.

Record added October 8, 2026. submit a correction.