SEBI v. Agrata Shares Securities Pvt. Ltd. and others (synchronized trades, Era Infra Engineering, 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 26 connected entities traded among themselves in Era Infra Engineering shares on both exchanges, and that eight others funded or passed through the money. The January 2022 order imposed penalties of Rs 10,000 to Rs 1 lakh each, Rs 6.4 lakh in total.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

—

Alleged gain

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Penalty as published

640k 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, in the matter of Era Infra Engineering Limited. It covers 34 noticees, mostly closely held companies in Delhi and Ghaziabad together with two individuals, and examines trading between June 2012 and December 2013.

SEBI's show-cause notice of 4 March 2021 said that 26 entities, identified as connected through exchange client codes, company directorships, know-your-customer records and bank transfers, executed repeated synchronized trades among themselves between June 2012 and September 2013: 1,922 trades for about 69.5 lakh shares on BSE (18.88 percent of market volume) and 3,617 trades for about 94.7 lakh shares on NSE (10.96 percent). It alleged that two further companies, Hi-Point Investment & Finance and Adel Landmarks, funded the trading, and that six more passed funds through their accounts as conduits.

The officer found that all 34 noticees had breached Section 12A of the SEBI Act and Regulations 3 and 4(1) and 4(2)(a) of the PFUTP Regulations. The 26 trading entities were held to have created artificial volume and a misleading appearance of trading, in breach of Regulation 4(2)(g); the two funders were held to have breached Regulation 4(2)(d).

Penalties under Section 15HA were set according to role: Rs 1,00,000 each on the two funders, Rs 30,000 each on the six conduits, and Rs 10,000 each on the 26 trading entities, Rs 6,40,000 in total. The officer noted that no unfair gain or investor loss was established and that more than nine years had passed. No trading restraint was ordered.

The record does not show whether any noticee appealed, whether the share price moved as a result, or the identities of the people behind the companies. It describes no criminal case.

This library tags the matter as matched orders and wash 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 2 techniques 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.

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

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.