SEBI v. Madhu Chanda and others (Sterling Group front-running accounts, 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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On 31 May 2022 a SEBI adjudicating officer fined Madhu Chanda, Anandilal Chanda and Anandilal Chanda HUF Rs 25 lakh, jointly and severally, for letting their trading accounts be used to front-run trades of the Sterling Group. They had already been barred from the market for six years in a separate order.

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

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, Suresh B Menon, decided the matter on 31 May 2022. The three noticees were Madhu Chanda, Anandilal Chanda and Anandilal Chanda HUF, who share one address in Mumbai. The order is one of several in the matter of front-running by Manish Chaturvedi and others.

The matter began with NSE reports in 2010 and 2011 about suspected front-running of the trades of about ten entities known as the Sterling Group between January 2010 and March 2011. SEBI investigated from March 2009 to March 2011 and divided those involved into front-runners, people who aided them, and the group whose trades were front-run. The Chanda accounts were among those said to have front-run the Sterling Group's trades.

The officer found that the trading accounts of Anandilal and the HUF were used by Madhu and Anandilal to front-run the group's trades, with Manish Chaturvedi's help, and that the noticees had aided and abetted the activity in breach of section 12A and Regulations 3 and 4(1) of the 2003 fraudulent and unfair trade practices regulations. Taking account of a final order of the whole-time member that debarred them from the market for six years and directed disgorgement of the gains from their accounts, the officer imposed a penalty of Rs 25,00,000 under section 15HA, payable jointly and severally.

The record does not show the profit made through these accounts in the extracts read, whether the noticees appealed, or whether any of the disgorgement has been recovered.

This library tags the matter as front running. 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.

• Front running — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2022-05-31 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

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.