SEBI v. Maxtor Conclave Pvt Ltd. and others (price manipulation, Sunstar Realty Development, 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 penalised 22 members of an alleged connected trading group a total of Rs 27 lakh for trades among themselves that lifted the price of Sunstar Realty Development Limited in late 2014 and 2015. The case against one noticee ended because she had died.

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

2.7m 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 30 June 2022 against 23 noticees in the matter of Sunstar Realty Development Limited, a company listed on BSE. SEBI investigated trading from November 2013 to June 2015, during which the price rose from Rs 51.20 to a high of Rs 425.95 in December 2014. SEBI identified a group of 44 suspected connected entities, of which these 23 were noticees.

SEBI alleged that in a third phase, from October to December 2014, twelve noticees executed nine trades among themselves at prices above the last traded price, contributing about 15.6 percent of the market's positive price movement. It alleged that in a fifth phase, from January to June 2015, sixteen noticees executed 39 trades among themselves, contributing about 10.8 percent. The charges were under section 12A of the SEBI Act and Regulations 3 and 4 of the 2003 fraud and unfair trade practices regulations.

The officer found the trades manipulative and fraudulent, finding that the connected noticees artificially inflated the price and created a misleading appearance of trading. The proceeding against Santosh Devi Agarwal was disposed of because she had died. The order treats as mitigating the age of the conduct and the fact that a whole-time member had on 19 March 2021 already barred the noticees from the market for between six months and one year on identical facts.

Penalties under section 15HA were Rs 1,00,000 to Rs 2,00,000 for most noticees, and Rs 3,00,000 jointly and severally on Hari Mohan Beriwala, his HUF and Manju Beriwala, a total of Rs 27,00,000 across the 22 penalised noticees. The order also records that SEBI had started prosecution proceedings against three sellers who sold shares worth more than Rs 3 crore each.

The record does not show whether the penalties were paid or appealed, or the outcome of the prosecution proceedings mentioned in the order, which are separate from this adjudication.

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. 2022-06-30 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.