SEBI v. Rikhav Brokers (now 4G IT Solutions India) and others (IPO bidding, Vaswani Industries, 2022)

Dismissed

✓ 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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SEBI alleged that a broker group made large IPO bids at the top of the price band for Vaswani Industries in 2011 and then withdrew or failed to fund them, inflating the apparent subscription. On remand from the Securities Appellate Tribunal, an adjudicating officer found the allegation not established and disposed of the case in February 2022 without penalty.

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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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.

What is alleged to have happened

The adjudication order of 25 February 2022 was passed by a SEBI adjudicating officer under Section 15-I of the SEBI Act. It concerns the initial public offer of Vaswani Industries Ltd and four noticees, Rikhav Brokers Pvt. Ltd. (now 4G IT Solutions India), AHL Investment Consultants, and Manba Investments & Securities and Manba Broking Services. An order of 25 April 2014 had imposed penalties of Rs 75 lakh, Rs 25 lakh and Rs 50 lakh each on them; the Securities Appellate Tribunal set it aside in 2016 and returned the matter for a fresh decision.

The show-cause notice of 21 March 2013 described a 100-lakh-share book-built issue with a price band of Rs 45 to Rs 49, open from 29 April to 3 May 2011, which looked 4.16 times subscribed on closing but only about 1.28 times after rejected, returned and withdrawn bids. SEBI alleged that bids were placed at the top of the band through the noticees' terminals and then withdrawn, left unfunded or stopped, in order to inflate the bid book and create a misleading appearance of demand, in breach of Section 12A of the SEBI Act and Regulations 3 and 4 of the PFUTP Regulations.

The noticees provided bank statements and chartered-accountant certificates showing the bids' funding, and pointed out that withdrawal of bids was permitted under the offer rules, that they bid in a small number of applications, and that the issue drew negative media attention. The officer, weighing low institutional participation and earlier SEBI orders on similar IPO bidding by other groups, found that the allegation of bidding to inflate the book at the highest price and mislead other investors was not established, and noted that two of the noticees were connected to each other but no connection to the issuer was shown.

The order concluded that the PFUTP violations were not established, that the questions of penalty did not arise, and disposed of the proceedings begun by the notice of 21 March 2013. No penalty or restraint was imposed.

The record does not show whether SEBI appealed, whether any other noticees in the wider IPO case were treated differently, or the issuer's own role. 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. 2022-02-25 SEBI adjudication order on remand, disposing of the proceedings

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.