SEBI v. Aventis Biofeeds Private Limited and others (closing-session price ramp, Ruchi Soya, 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 April 2022 a SEBI adjudicating officer imposed a joint penalty of Rs 25 lakh on nine connected companies that bought Ruchi Soya shares above the market in the last half hour of the September 2012 futures expiry. The aim was found to be a higher futures settlement price. A separate order had already required disgorgement of Rs 5.76 crore.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

—

Alleged gain

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Penalty as published

2.5m 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, Vijayant Kumar Verma, decided the matter on 29 April 2022. The nine noticees are connected companies, led by Aventis Biofeeds Private Limited, identified from shared addresses, phone numbers, directors and fund transfers. They traded in the shares and futures of Ruchi Soya Industries Ltd on NSE on 27 September 2012, the expiry day of the September futures.

SEBI observed that the price had drifted down from about Rs 74 to Rs 70.65 before 3 pm, then jumped 21.4 per cent in five minutes to close at Rs 87.40 on that day. About 1.33 crore shares, 84 per cent of the day's volume, traded in the final half hour. The futures settlement price was based on the volume-weighted price in that half hour, at Rs 78.65. Seven of the group held long futures positions and one held a short, so a higher cash price lowered their losses.

The order finds that four of the noticees, as buyers, placed orders above the last traded price although sell orders were available at lower prices, and that the others, as sellers, colluded with them, in order to raise the cash price. It accepts a calculation that the group reduced its futures losses by Rs 5.76 crore, leaving a net gain of about Rs 1.1 crore after notional cash-market losses, and finds breaches of section 12A of the SEBI Act and regulations 3 and 4 of the PFUTP Regulations.

It imposes Rs 25,00,000 under section 15HA of the SEBI Act, payable jointly and severally. In setting it, the officer weighed a whole-time member order of March 2021 requiring the group to disgorge Rs 5.76 crore with 12 per cent interest from 28 September 2012, and a market bar from February to December 2013. Two noticees had since merged into others, which inherit the directions.

The record does not show whether this penalty was appealed or paid.

This library tags the matter as marking the close and settlement 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 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.

• Marking the close — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.
• Settlement price manipulation — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2022-04-29 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.

Related actions

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

Record added October 8, 2026. submit a correction.