SEBI v. Ashish S Parekh and others (front running of a large client's orders, 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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A SEBI whole-time member found that dealers who handled a large client's orders passed the order details to relatives and associates, who traded just ahead of those orders and squared off for intraday profits, mostly in stock options. The January 2026 final order restrained the noticees for several years, ordered disgorgement of Rs 1,07,61,609 with interest and imposed penalties of Rs 90 lakh in total.

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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Penalty as published

9m 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

This final order of 16 January 2026 was passed by a SEBI whole-time member under Sections 11 and 11B of the SEBI Act, after an ex parte interim order of 26 December 2022 had been confirmed. It concerns 13 noticees: nine alleged front runners (relatives, associates and Hindu undivided family accounts) and four alleged information carriers, namely Ashish S Parekh, Rajesh Joshi, Nagendra S Dubey and Chirag Atul Pithadia, who were dealers or traders handling accounts for the large client.

The case began with an NSE report of suspected front running of the orders of an individual the order calls the Big Client. SEBI alleged that the four carriers knew of the client's impending orders, passed the details on, and that the front runners bought or sold in the same contracts just before those orders and reversed the position shortly after. Roughly 80 percent of the trades were in the futures and options segment, and the annexures list intraday pairs of buy and sell trades in individual stock options and some cash equities.

The order relies on telephone records linking the carriers to each other and to the accounts, on the trading control relationships among the front runners, and on the repeated pattern of trades placed ahead of the Big Client's orders, which it treats as circumstantial evidence that non-public information was passed on. It holds that the front-running allegations against all 13 noticees stand established, as breaches of Section 12A of the SEBI Act and Regulations 3 and 4 of the PFUTP Regulations, including the deemed-fraud rule for orders placed with knowledge of a substantial impending transaction.

SEBI restrained ten noticees from dealing in securities for five years, counted from the 2022 interim order, and two more for five years from the 2026 order. Three of the carriers were also barred for four years from association with registered intermediaries or listed companies, counted from the interim order, and a fourth for four years from the final order. The interim directions against one noticee who had died were vacated, except for disgorgement through her legal heirs. The noticees must jointly and severally disgorge Rs 1,07,61,609 with 12 percent interest, with bank and demat debit freezes continuing until payment, and must pay penalties under Section 15HA of Rs 5 lakh each for the front runners, Rs 15 lakh each for Mr Parekh and Mr Joshi, and Rs 10 lakh each for Mr Dubey and Mr Pithadia, Rs 90 lakh in all.

The record does not show whether any noticee appealed or how much of the disgorgement was collected, apart from a small sum held in escrow from the interim order. It also does not identify the Big Client as having done anything wrong, and it describes no criminal case. The listing slug for this record reflects an early keyword pass and does not describe the conduct.

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. 2026-01-16 SEBI final order

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

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.