SEBI v. Bhavik Indravadan Shah and others (front running a broker client, 2026)

Judgment entered

✓ 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 August 2026 a SEBI adjudicating officer found that a dealer at Kaushik Shah Shares and Securities, with his wife and family HUF, traded ahead of 72 large orders of that broker's biggest client between 2021 and 2025. The three are jointly penalised Rs 10 lakh.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

—

Alleged gain

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Penalty as published

1m INR

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. This regulator states penalties in INR. The figure is recorded as published and is not converted, so it does not appear in the USD totals or medians used elsewhere on this site.

What is alleged to have happened

The adjudication order of 19 August 2026 was made by a SEBI adjudicating officer in Mumbai. The noticees are Bhavik Indravadan Shah, a dealer at the stockbroker Kaushik Shah Shares and Securities Pvt. Ltd., whose client the order calls the Big Client; his wife Jayshree Bhavik Shah; and Bhavik Indravadan Shah HUF.

SEBI investigated trading from 1 October 2021 to 15 January 2025 and alleged that Mr Shah, who had access to the Big Client's impending orders, and his related entities traded ahead of those orders and profited. The alleged conduct breached section 12A of the SEBI Act and the PFUTP Regulations, including the front-running provision in regulation 4(2)(q).

The order finds, on a strong preponderance of probability, that the noticees traded on non-public information about the client's large orders in 72 trades during the period. It relies on Mr Shah's access to that information, the commonality of the noticees' trades with the client's, and the consistent repetition of the pattern over about three years, and says that using non-public information for personal gain is enough to amount to fraud without showing injury to a particular party.

The three noticees are jointly and severally liable for a penalty of Rs 10 lakh under section 15HA. The order notes that no loss to any specific investor and no repeated violations appear on record, and that it considered the profit made. No restraint or disgorgement was ordered.

The record does not show an appeal, the size of the profits, or the effect on the client. It describes no criminal case.

This library tags the matter as front running. 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.

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

Timeline

1. 2026-08-19 SEBI adjudication order imposing penalty

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.