SEBI v. Ketan Pravinbahi Panchal and others (price manipulation, Thirani Projects, 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 fined 29 noticees Rs 1.58 crore in total over manipulation of the Thirani Projects share price in early 2018, including funding of traders by connected companies and trading by the issuer itself. The penalties range from Rs 5 lakh to Rs 8 lakh each.

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

15.8m 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 30 August 2022. The stock was Thirani Projects Ltd, listed on the BSE and the Calcutta Stock Exchange. SEBI examined 27 December 2017 to 20 April 2018 and named 29 noticees, including the issuer itself, a first group of five traders led by Ketan Pravinbahi Panchal, a second group of traders and companies that bought the stock, and five companies alleged to have funded them.

SEBI alleged that the first group pushed the price up and traded synchronously in a first period and also made intraday reversal trades among themselves. In a second period, it alleged that thirteen buying noticees lifted the price with money supplied by five funding companies, that five more noticees took part in the price manipulation, and that the company traded its own scrip alongside them.

The order finds breaches of section 12A and Regulations 3 and 4 of the PFUTP Regulations by all 29 noticees, with the funding companies found in breach of Regulation 4(2)(d). It treats the first five as repeat violators, noting an earlier adjudication order of March 2022 against them.

Penalties under section 15HA were Rs 8 lakh each on the first four, Rs 6 lakh on the fifth, and Rs 5 lakh each on the other 24 noticees, including the company, Rs 1.58 crore in all, payable within 45 days. No market bars were imposed.

The record does not show whether anyone appealed, whether the penalties were paid, or the profit made. It describes no criminal case.

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. 2022-08-30 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.