SEBI v. Manju Mutha and Ramesh Kumar Jain (circular and reversal trades, Octant Interactive Technologies, 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-59932-matched-orders-2022) by email

In June 2022 a SEBI adjudicating officer fined two individuals Rs 2,00,000 each for taking part in circular and reversal trades in Octant Interactive Technologies shares in 2009. They had won a remand from the Securities Appellate Tribunal because they were not properly heard in the first round.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

—

Disgorgement

—

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

—

Alleged gain

—

Penalty as published

400k 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 22 June 2022 against Manju Mutha and Ramesh Kumar Jain in the matter of Octant Interactive Technologies Ltd, a BSE-listed company. An earlier order of 2 August 2019 had penalised 35 entities for the manipulation. The Securities Appellate Tribunal quashed that order only for these two, because the hearing notice went to an old address and not to their authorised representative, and it left the show cause notice alive.

SEBI had investigated trading between 2 January and 9 September 2009 and alleged that three groups of linked traders, including a Kolkata group and a group around Manish Rathi, created artificial volume and pushed the price up using circular trades, reversal trades, synchronised trades and off-market transfers of shares. The two noticees were treated as part of that group. The charges rested on Regulations 3 and 4 of the 2003 fraud and unfair trade practices regulations and section 12A of the SEBI Act.

After giving the noticees an inspection of documents and hearing dates, the officer found that their trades showed a circular and reversal pattern with no real change of beneficial ownership, and that as part of the group they artificially raised the price and created volume with the potential to mislead investors. The order notes that the investigation did not quantify any gain or investor loss.

Each noticee was penalised Rs 2,00,000 under section 15HA of the SEBI Act, a total of Rs 4,00,000, payable within 45 days. The order contains no market bar.

The record does not show whether either noticee appealed again, whether the penalties were paid, or the profit made. The order does not mention a criminal case.

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

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

Timeline

1. 2022-06-22 SEBI adjudication order (after remand by SAT)

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.