SEBI v. Sharekhan Ltd (one-share buys depressing the price, Sampada Chemicals, 2022)

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 adjudicating officer found that the broker Sharekhan repeatedly bought a single Sampada Chemicals share at a time, mostly from two indebted clients, and in doing so pushed the last traded price and new low prices down during a sharp fall in late 2010. The January 2022 order imposed a penalty of Rs 5 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

500k 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 28 January 2022 was passed by a SEBI adjudicating officer under Section 15-I of the SEBI Act against Sharekhan Ltd., a stock broker, in the matter of Sampada Chemicals Ltd., whose shares were listed on BSE. SEBI had investigated October 2010 to March 2011 and focused on the second stretch, 25 November to 31 December 2010, when the price fell from Rs 489.90 to Rs 134.75.

SEBI alleged that in that stretch Sharekhan executed 13 trades of one share each, 12 of them as the buyer on trades that set a new low price, contributing a negative Rs 132.40 to the last traded price. Eight of the trades were against sell orders of two of its own clients, who were responsible for a large share of the market's downward price movement, and the order attributes a negative Rs 87.20 to those eight. SEBI alleged breach of Regulations 3 and 4 of the PFUTP Regulations.

Sharekhan answered that the delay in the proceedings and incomplete inspection of documents prejudiced it, that the scrip was illiquid and the price fall was market driven, that its buying of small lots was to test the market and to recover sums the two clients owed, that there was no connection with the counterparties beyond the broker-client relationship, and that its share of market volume was 0.09 percent. The officer found that buying one share at a time, when ample sell orders and its own holdings existed, lacked a commercial rationale and was not genuine trading, and that 37.28 percent of the market's negative price movement was not small.

The officer concluded that Sharekhan's trades had influenced the price during the fall and created artificial volume and a false appearance of trading, in breach of Regulations 3(a) to (d), 4(1), 4(2)(a) and 4(2)(e), and imposed a Section 15HA penalty of Rs 5,00,000. No restraint on trading was ordered.

The record does not show whether Sharekhan appealed, what it gained from the trades, or what action was taken against the two clients, who are not named as noticees in this order. It describes no criminal case.

This library tags the matter as price manipulation. 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.

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

Timeline

1. 2022-01-28 SEBI adjudication order imposing a 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
• 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.