SEBI v. National Stock Exchange of India and others (dark fibre connectivity for brokers, 2022)

Judgment entered

✓ Checked against the primary document on October 9, 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 penalised the National Stock Exchange, several current and former officials, a telecom vendor and two brokers about Rs 43.8 crore in aggregate over preferential dark-fibre network connectivity given to certain brokers between 2009 and 2016. The order finds the two brokers gained a latency advantage in collusion with the exchange and vendor.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

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Alleged gain

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Penalty as published

438m 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

This adjudication order of 28 June 2022 has 18 noticees: the National Stock Exchange of India, several of its current and former senior officials including Chitra Ramakrishna, Subramanian Anand and Ravi Varanasi, Sampark Infotainment Private Limited and two of its people, the brokers Way2Wealth Brokers and GKN Securities and several of their staff or owners, and others. It follows complaints about co-location and governance at the exchange and a SEBI expert committee, then a forensic review by Deloitte and a SEBI investigation covering 2009 to 2016.

SEBI alleged that Sampark arranged cabling in the exchange's co-location area so that Way2Wealth and GKN had lower latency than other brokers on the same multiplexer, that the exchange allowed unlicensed point-to-point dark fibre connectivity to continue, and that exchange staff colluded with the brokers. The charges included regulations 3(d) and 4(1) of the PFUTP Regulations, section 12A(c), exchange regulations, broker conduct rules and false information to SEBI.

The officer found Way2Wealth and GKN were direct beneficiaries of preferential treatment in collusion with exchange employees and Sampark, and made significant profit from the latency advantage; the order notes that SEBI had separately directed disgorgement of those gains. It also held the exchange and certain officials in breach for permitting the arrangement and for governance failures, and held some GKN individuals liable for giving SEBI incorrect information that the vendor's line had been ended in July 2015.

Penalties imposed under section 15HA ranged from Rs 1 crore to Rs 5 crore: Rs 5 crore on the exchange, Rs 3 crore on each of Ms Ramakrishna, Mr Anand, Mr Varanasi and Sampark, Rs 5 crore on Way2Wealth and Rs 4 crore on GKN, with smaller sums on others. Further penalties under sections 15HB and 23H of the Securities Contracts (Regulation) Act and for false information brought the table to about Rs 43.8 crore in aggregate, by our addition.

The record does not show appeals, payment, or the final disgorgement amounts, which are outside this order.

This library has no technique that fits preferential network access for brokers, so the matter is tagged with none. 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.

Timeline

1. 2022-06-28 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 page
• Order (PDF)

The linked release is published by the issuing regulator under its own terms. Our summary and narrative above are our own writing.

Record added October 8, 2026. submit a correction.