SEBI v. Prakash C Kanugo and others (insider trading, Prakash Steelage Ltd, 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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A SEBI adjudicating officer found that the chairman and managing director of Prakash Steelage moved 25 lakh of his company's shares off-market while holding unpublished results, with payment made a year later. The order penalises him and four others Rs 21 lakh in total, mostly for him.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

—

Alleged gain

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Penalty as published

2.1m 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

The adjudicating officer of the Securities and Exchange Board of India decided the matter on 29 July 2022. The noticees were Prakash C Kanugo, chairman and managing director of Prakash Steelage Ltd (listed on the BSE and NSE), Dumet Wire India Pvt Ltd, the company itself, its company secretary and compliance officer Palak Kohli Kochhar, and the depository participant Ajcon Global Services Ltd.

SEBI examined the period 15 April to 30 May 2016, when the results for the quarter ended March 2016 were unpublished. It alleged that Mr Kanugo, while holding that information, transferred 25 lakh shares off-market to Dumet Wire on 4 May 2016, that the consideration reached him only in March and April 2017, that the transfer paperwork gave no reason, and that the transaction was wrongly described to the exchanges.

The order holds that the results were unpublished price-sensitive information, that Mr Kanugo was an insider, and that the transfer was a trade rather than a genuine pledge, noting that the arrangement allowed the transferee to sell freely without any default. It finds breaches of section 12A(d) and (e) of the SEBI Act and Regulation 4(1) of the PIT Regulations, and failures of disclosure and compliance by the company, the compliance officer and the depository participant.

Penalties were Rs 17 lakh on Mr Kanugo under sections 15A(b), 15G and 15HA and section 23H of the securities contracts law, Rs 1 lakh each on Dumet Wire, the company, Ms Kochhar and Ajcon Global, Rs 21 lakh in all. No disgorgement or market bar is ordered.

The record does not show whether any noticee appealed, what profit or loss the trade produced, or whether payments were made. It describes no criminal case.

This library tags the matter as insider trading. 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.

• Insider trading — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2022-07-29 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

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.