SEBI v. Sunrise Asian Ltd. and others (price manipulation, 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 June 2022 a SEBI adjudicating officer imposed a joint penalty of Rs 1 crore on Sunrise Asian Ltd., five of its whole-time directors and 80 other entities for manipulating the price of the company's shares through trades among connected parties between 2012 and 2015. The order finds that the company and its directors colluded with the traders so that shares issued under a merger scheme could be sold at inflated prices.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

—

Alleged gain

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Penalty as published

10m 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

An adjudicating officer of SEBI issued this order on 17 June 2022 against 86 noticees in the matter of Sunrise Asian Limited, a company listed on BSE. The noticees were the company, five whole-time directors, and 80 other companies, firms and individuals alleged to be linked traders. The matter began with a reference from the Income Tax Department in Kolkata, and SEBI investigated trading from October 2012 to September 2015.

SEBI alleged that about 1,059 people had received shares in the company under a scheme of amalgamation approved by the Bombay High Court in March 2013, and that 77 connected noticees bought those shares from them. It further alleged that the connected group traded among themselves repeatedly to lift the last traded price, so that the allottees could sell at inflated levels. The charges were under Regulations 3 and 4 of the 2003 fraud and unfair trade practices regulations, with the 80 traders also charged under regulations 4(2)(a) and (e) on false appearance of trading and price manipulation.

The order finds that the sales by the allottees to the connected group were not coincidence and could not have occurred without collusion by the company and its directors. On a preponderance of probabilities it finds that the noticees acted on a combined strategy to manipulate the price, which amounts to fraud under the regulations. The noticees denied any connection and argued that the notice was delayed and that a tax tribunal had ruled for some of them.

The order imposes a single penalty of Rs 1,00,00,000 under section 15HA of the SEBI Act on all 86 noticees jointly and severally, payable within 45 days. It records that a whole-time member had earlier, in September 2021, debarred the noticees from the securities market, which is a separate order not covered here. Two other parties had already been disposed of in earlier proceedings.

The record does not show the amount of any gain or investor loss, because the officer found neither could be quantified, nor whether the penalty was paid or appealed. The order does not mention a criminal case.

This library tags the matter as price manipulation and matched orders. 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.

• Price manipulation — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.
• Matched orders — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2022-06-17 SEBI adjudication 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.