SEBI v. Virendra Pratap Singh and others (India Infoline front-running through mule 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 3 June 2022 a SEBI whole-time member barred six people from the securities market and disgorged about Rs 59 lakh of gains in a front-running case involving trades of India Infoline group entities. The order finds a dealer and an associate ran the accounts of four others as mule accounts.

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

1.8m 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 whole-time member, S K Mohanty, decided the matter on 3 June 2022 by final order under sections 11 and 11B of the SEBI Act. The six noticees were Virendra Pratap Singh, Neha Virendra Singh, Gulammohammed Gulamabbas Shaikh, Mohammedidrish A Shaikh, Santosh Brijraj Singh and Adil Gulam Suthar. An ex parte interim order of 1 October 2020 and a confirmatory order of 31 August 2021 had preceded it.

SEBI began with a surveillance alert suggesting that Mr Singh and Ms Singh were trading ahead of orders from India Infoline Asset Management Ltd. The order finds that Santosh Brijraj Singh, a dealer who handled the orders of large clients of the group and so knew of impending trades, and Adil Gulam Suthar opened, ran and controlled the accounts of Noticees 1 to 4. Those four were described as poor and not literate, and the order treats the accounts as mule accounts. The order identifies Noticees 5 and 6 as the real beneficiaries.

The order tabulates the wrongful gains from front-running trades in those accounts at about Rs 59.28 lakh in total, and records that Noticees 5 and 6 had deposited the sum in escrow, which was disgorged. Noticees 1 to 4 were restrained from the securities market and from holding directorships or similar roles for two years, and Noticees 5 and 6 for five years.

Penalties under section 15HA were Rs 10,00,000 on Santosh Brijraj Singh and Rs 8,00,000 on Adil Gulam Suthar, which total Rs 18 lakh. No penalty was imposed on Noticees 1 to 4.

The record does not show whether any appeal was filed, what the trade-by-trade details were beyond the order's tables, or whether other action was taken against the dealer's employer or in a criminal forum.

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. 2022-06-03 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.