SEBI v. Silver Stream Equities Private Limited (NSE co-location secondary server, 2022)
Judgment entered
Checked against the primary document on October 9, 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.
In February 2022 a SEBI adjudicating officer fined the stockbroker Silver Stream Equities Private Limited Rs 6 lakh in total for repeatedly connecting to NSE's secondary co-location server against exchange guidelines, which the order treated as an unfair trade practice. The order notes that no gain or investor loss was shown.
The record
| Agency | SEBI (India) |
|---|---|
| Date filed | 2022-02-16 |
| Date resolved | 2022-02-16 |
| Court | SEBI Adjudicating Officer |
| Status | judgment |
| Asset class | equities, derivatives, currency |
| Instruments | cash, futures and options and currency derivatives |
| Venue | NSE |
| Criminal parallel | No |
| Defendants | Silver Stream Equities Private Limited |
| Techniques |
What was ordered
- Civil penalty
- —
- Disgorgement
- —
- Prejudgment interest
- —
- Total relief
- —
- Alleged gain
- —
- Penalty as published
- 600k INR
What is alleged to have happened
This adjudication order of 16 February 2022 concerns Silver Stream Equities Private Limited, a trading member of the National Stock Exchange, in the matter of the NSE co-location facility. SEBI took up the matter after complaints that some brokers had preferential access to the exchange's tick-by-tick data feed, and it had Ernst & Young carry out a forensic audit of the broker's primary and secondary server connections, with a report in October 2019.
A show cause notice of 24 May 2021 alleged breach of the NSE bye-laws and co-location guidelines, the stock brokers' code of conduct, and section 12A of the SEBI Act read with the PFUTP Regulations (3(b), 3(c), 3(d) and 4(1)). The core charge was that the broker regularly logged into the secondary server, meant for use only when the primary feed was unavailable, despite NSE's guidance and reprimands. The order records connections on 201 trading days in futures and options, 14 in the cash segment and 37 in currency derivatives.
The adjudicating officer rejected the broker's argument about the long delay in issuing the notice and found the guidelines and code of conduct breached. The officer also held that routinely bypassing the primary source undermined fair and equal access for other brokers and was an unfair trade practice under Regulation 4(1) of the PFUTP Regulations. The officer noted that the record showed no gain, unfair advantage or investor loss.
The penalty was Rs 5 lakh under section 15HA and Rs 1 lakh under section 15HB of the SEBI Act, Rs 6 lakh in all, payable within 45 days. The order text describes the first figure in words inconsistently, but states the total as six lakh rupees.
The record does not show whether the broker appealed or whether it traded on information from the secondary feed. The order records no criminal case and does not address the exchange's own role, which is the subject of separate proceedings.
This library applies no technique tag to the matter, because no technique, because the finding concerns a broker's use of an exchange server contrary to guidelines, with no proven trading advantage, which fits none of the library's manipulation techniques. 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.
Timeline
- 2022-02-16 SEBI adjudication 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.