SEBI v. Vipul Pannalal Shah and H K Stock Services Private Limited (small orders above last price, Coral Hub, 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.
In April 2022 a SEBI adjudicating officer fined an individual and a trading company Rs 50,000 each, Rs 1,00,000 in total, for small orders priced above the last traded price and synchronised trades in Coral Hub Limited shares in 2008-09. The low penalty reflected the time that had passed and the absence of quantified gain.
The record
| Agency | SEBI (India) |
|---|---|
| Date filed | 2022-04-27 |
| Date resolved | 2022-04-27 |
| Court | SEBI adjudicating officer |
| Status | judgment |
| Asset class | equities |
| Instruments | Coral Hub Limited shares |
| Venue | NSE, BSE |
| Criminal parallel | No |
| Defendants | Vipul Pannalal Shah ; H K Stock Services Private Limited |
| Techniques | Price manipulation , Matched orders |
What was ordered
- Civil penalty
- —
- Disgorgement
- —
- Prejudgment interest
- —
- Total relief
- —
- Alleged gain
- —
- Penalty as published
- 100k INR
What is alleged to have happened
A SEBI adjudicating officer, Maninder Cheema, decided the matter on 27 April 2022. The noticees are Vipul Pannalal Shah and H K Stock Services Private Limited, which were among the larger traders in Coral Hub Limited on NSE and BSE in the period before the company's February 2009 share split. This order sits alongside a February 2022 order against another group trading the same scrip.
SEBI alleged that, between December 2008 and March 2009, the two noticees used small buy orders placed above the last traded price to lift the price, and made synchronised trades. The order records that Mr Shah contributed about 7 per cent and 12 per cent of the total positive last-traded-price movement on NSE and BSE, and also contributed to price through first trades of the day. On NSE and BSE respectively, 65 and 74 of his buy trades were synchronised with sell orders placed within a minute.
The adjudicating officer rejected the argument that fraud requires proof that someone was induced, saying that artificially raised prices may induce other investors, and distinguished the precedents the noticees cited by the pattern and size of their price contributions. It found that they manipulated the price and created a misleading appearance of trading, in breach of section 12A of the SEBI Act and regulations 3 and 4 of the PFUTP Regulations.
A penalty of Rs 50,000 each was imposed under section 15HA of the SEBI Act, Rs 1,00,000 in total. The officer noted that no gain or investor loss had been shown and that the trades dated from 2008-09.
The record does not show whether the order was appealed or paid.
This library tags the matter as price manipulation and matched orders. 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.
- Price manipulation — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.
- Matched orders — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.
Timeline
- 2022-04-27 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.
Related actions
Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.