SEBI v. Finquest Securities Pvt Ltd (broker, synchronised trades, Asian Granito India, 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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In March 2022 a SEBI adjudicating officer fined a stockbroker Rs 12,00,000 for acting on both sides of synchronised trades in Asian Granito India shares for a group connected to its own directors. The order found it helped create a misleading appearance of trading.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

—

Alleged gain

—

Penalty as published

1.2m 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

A SEBI adjudicating officer, Soma Majumder, decided the matter on 29 March 2022. The sole noticee is Finquest Securities Pvt Ltd, a SEBI-registered stock broker. The shares concerned are those of Asian Granito India Limited, listed on BSE and NSE, and SEBI examined the period December 2011 to October 2014.

SEBI had identified a 'Bharat Patel Group' of 16 suspected entities. It alleged that six of them put through 26 synchronised trades on BSE covering about 21.4 lakh shares, roughly 18.55 per cent of market volume, and further synchronised trades on NSE. The broker was on both sides of 13 of the BSE trades, covering 12,27,197 shares, with orders entered from two of its own terminals. Two directors of the broker, Hardik Bharat Patel and Minal Bharat Patel, were themselves among the suspected entities.

The order holds that the broker was closely connected to the group and played an active part in order placement and execution, so it was a party to trades that created artificial volume with no real change of beneficial ownership. It rejected the broker's arguments that it merely followed client instructions and that no price movement or investor loss had been alleged. The notice did not charge price manipulation, and the officer held that losses need not be proved. The broker was also held to have breached the broker code of conduct on due skill and care.

The officer imposed Rs 10,00,000 under section 15HA of the SEBI Act and Rs 2,00,000 under section 15HB, Rs 12,00,000 in all. The order records that neither the broker's gain nor investors' losses were quantified.

The record does not show whether the order was appealed or paid or what happened to the Bharat Patel Group entities.

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. 2022-03-29 SEBI 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
• Order (PDF)

The linked release is published by the issuing regulator under its own terms. Our summary and narrative above are our own writing.

Same matter

The library links these 2 records because they appear to concern one matter: the same lead defendant, an overlapping technique tag and close filing dates, or a shared court docket or a release that cites the other. Records are listed by date filed.

This grouping is the library's, made by matching names, techniques, dates and citations when the site is built. It is not the regulator's or a court's determination that the records are one case, and it errs towards missing a link rather than making a false one.

Related actions

Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.

Record added October 8, 2026. submit a correction.