SEBI v. Shailendra Mehta (WhatsApp circulation of Bata India Ltd results, 2022)

Dismissed

✓ 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.

Report an error in this record (sebi-63513-insider-trading-2022) by email

A SEBI adjudicating officer disposed of a show cause notice alleging that unpublished price sensitive information about Bata India Ltd was passed on through WhatsApp messages, imposing no penalty because a tribunal and the Supreme Court had already rejected SEBI's case on materially identical facts in related matters.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

—

Disgorgement

—

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

—

Alleged gain

—

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.

What is alleged to have happened

The adjudicating officer's order of 29 September 2022 closes a proceeding against one noticee, Mr Mehta, arising from SEBI's examination of WhatsApp chats seized from members of a group of market contacts after press reports in November 2017 that unpublished price sensitive information was circulating in private chat groups.

SEBI alleged that the chats showed a message with Bata quarterly figures that Mr Mehta allegedly sent to Shruti Vora on 10 February 2016, shortly before the company announced its results on the exchanges that afternoon; Ms Vora then forwarded it to another contact on a one-to-one chat. The notice charged a breach of section 12A(d) and (e) of the SEBI Act read with Regulation 3(1) of the Prohibition of Insider Trading Regulations, 2015, and the examined period was 1 January to 10 February 2016. The order does not allege that any noticee traded on the information.

The officer did not rule on whether the message was price sensitive information or whether it came from a person connected with the company. Instead the order records that the Securities Appellate Tribunal had on 22 March 2021 set aside SEBI's findings in a closely similar matter on the same type of evidence, that the Supreme Court on 26 September 2022 declined to interfere with that ruling, and that the facts here were a replica involving a different company.

On that basis the order disposes of the notice without considering the merits and imposes no monetary penalty and no other direction.

The record does not show whether SEBI took any further step, whether the information was in fact non-public when sent, or whether anyone traded; the order contains no finding of loss or gain.

This library tags the matter as insider trading (alleged communication of unpublished price sensitive information). 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. 2022-09-29 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.

Same matter

The library links these 3 records because they appear to concern one matter: the same lead defendant, an overlapping technique tag and close filing dates, or a shared court docket or a release that cites the other. Records are listed by date filed.

This grouping is the library's, made by matching names, techniques, dates and citations when the site is built. It is not the regulator's or a court's determination that the records are one case, and it errs towards missing a link rather than making a false one.

Related actions

Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.

Record added October 8, 2026. submit a correction.