SEBI v. Nisha Yadav and others (SMS-driven volume spurt, Covidh 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.

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In June 2022 a SEBI adjudicating officer fined three individuals a total of Rs 60 lakh for acquiring shares of the illiquid stock Covidh Technologies off-market, circulating SMS buy tips and selling into the volume surge in February 2017. Two of them were also fined for ignoring SEBI summons.

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

6m 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 Nisha Yadav, Jalaj Agrawal and Prabhakara Rao Alokam in the matter of Covidh Technologies Limited, listed on BSE. SEBI investigated the period 16 to 21 February 2017, when average daily traded volume was about 4.4 lakh shares against 3,276 shares in the preceding three months.

SEBI alleged a pattern of buying shares through off-market transfers, paid for in cash, then circulating SMS messages recommending purchase to lift volume in a stock with little liquidity, and then giving certain holders an exit. It alleged that Ms Yadav and Mr Agrawal, who were connected to each other, received shares off-market, that all three were among the top net sellers during the spurt, and that the first two ignored summons issued by SEBI's investigating authority.

The order finds that the trading of the three noticees created artificial volume in an illiquid scrip and was a manipulative, fraudulent and unfair trade practice, in breach of section 12A of the SEBI Act and Regulations 3 and 4 of the 2003 regulations. It also holds that Ms Yadav and Mr Agrawal violated sections 11C(3) and 11C(5) by not complying with summons.

Penalties were Rs 15,00,000 each on Ms Yadav and Mr Agrawal under section 15HA, with a further Rs 10,00,000 each under section 15A(a) for the summons failures, and Rs 10,00,000 on Mr Alokam under section 15HA, together Rs 60,00,000. The officer noted that gain and investor loss were not quantified and that no earlier default was recorded.

The record does not show who sent the SMS messages, whether the penalties were paid or appealed, or any criminal case.

This library tags the matter as pump and dump. 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.

• Pump and dump — 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.