SEBI v. Arvind Mehrotra and others (NIIT Technologies insider trading, 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-59607-insider-trading-2022) by email

On 9 June 2022 a SEBI whole-time member found that Arvind Mehrotra, a senior NIIT Technologies executive, sold shares while holding undisclosed information about a client dispute, barred him for six months, ordered disgorgement of Rs 1,03,185 with interest and imposed penalties of Rs 12 lakh. The case against a second noticee was not established.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

—

Disgorgement

—

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

—

Alleged gain

—

Penalty as published

1.2m 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 9 June 2022 by order under sections 11 and 11B of the SEBI Act. The three noticees were Pratibha Advani, whose case had already been disposed of by a settlement order of 12 November 2020, Ashok Arora and Arvind Mehrotra. SEBI had examined trading in NIIT Technologies Ltd, listed on NSE and BSE, between December 2014 and March 2015.

On 23 March 2015, after market hours, NIIT announced that a dispute had arisen between a subsidiary and a client in the Asia-Pacific region and that it would provide US$10 million against unbilled revenue. The exchange's analysis of earlier trading led SEBI to allege that the noticees had traded on unpublished price-sensitive information (UPSI) about the dispute, in breach of section 12A(d) and (e) of the SEBI Act and the 1992 insider trading regulations.

The officer found no clinching evidence that Mr Arora held the information when he traded, and the allegation against him was not established. For Mr Mehrotra, president of a business unit who had led talks on the dispute, the order finds that he held the information and sold 2,500 shares in January and February 2015, that he falsely told the compliance officer he held no such information when seeking clearance, and that he failed to disclose a November 2014 sale of 2,000 shares to the company and the exchanges.

The directions against Mr Mehrotra were a six-month market bar, disgorgement of the loss avoided, Rs 1,03,185, with 9 per cent simple interest, and a freeze on disposing of assets until payment. The penalties were Rs 10,00,000 under section 15G, Rs 1,00,000 under section 15A(b) and Rs 1,00,000 under section 15HB, a total of Rs 12 lakh.

The record does not show whether Mr Mehrotra appealed or what the terms of Ms Advani's earlier settlement were.

This library tags the matter as insider trading. 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.

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

Timeline

1. 2022-06-09 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.