SEBI v. Bhola Nath Dhall and Abhishek Dhall (Religare Finvest front-running, 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.

Report an error in this record (sebi-59595-front-running-2022) by email

On 8 June 2022 a SEBI whole-time member penalised Bhola Nath Dhall, a former Religare Finvest vice president, Rs 6 lakh, barred him for two years and ordered disgorgement of about Rs 12.3 lakh plus interest for front-running his employer's share sales through another person's account.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

—

Disgorgement

—

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

—

Alleged gain

—

Penalty as published

600k 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, Ananta Barua, decided the matter on 8 June 2022 by final order. The two noticees were Bhola Nath Dhall, a former Vice President (Risk) at Religare Finvest Ltd (RFL), and Abhishek Dhall, in whose account the trades were made. SEBI investigated from May 2015 to April 2016 after an NSE alert.

RFL is a lender that offers loans against shares and, when a borrower's margin falls short, sells the pledged shares. The order records that Mr Dhall supervised margin and could instruct RFL's dealer on such sales and that he decided selling prices. SEBI alleged that he knew of RFL's impending sales and that trades in four stocks, including Core Education, Everonn Education, Maharashtra Seamless and Reliance Naval and Engineering, were placed through Abhishek Dhall's account just ahead of them to profit from or avoid the effect, in breach of section 12A and Regulations 3 and 4(1) of the 2003 fraudulent and unfair trade practices regulations.

The WTM restrained Bhola Nath Dhall from the securities market for two years and Abhishek Dhall for three months, directed Bhola Nath Dhall to disgorge Rs 12,33,721 with 12 per cent annual interest from 29 April 2016 into the Investor Protection and Education Fund, and imposed a Rs 6,00,000 penalty on him under section 15HA. No penalty was imposed on Abhishek Dhall.

The record does not show Abhishek Dhall's exact relationship to his co-noticee, whether the order has been appealed, or any employment action by RFL.

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. 2022-06-08 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.