SEBI v. Kanchan Jena and others (front running of Deutsche Mutual Fund, 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.

Report an error in this record (sebi-64293-front-running-2022) by email

A SEBI adjudicating officer on 21 October 2022 penalised five people a combined Rs 10 lakh for trading ahead of the equity orders of Deutsche Mutual Fund (now DHFL Pramerica Mutual Fund) in 2014-15. The accounts were linked to the family of the fund's manager, who had already settled with SEBI.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

—

Disgorgement

—

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

—

Alleged gain

—

Penalty as published

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

SEBI investigated suspected front running of the trades of Deutsche Mutual Fund, now DHFL Pramerica Mutual Fund, between 1 September 2014 and 29 May 2015. The five noticees were three members of one family (Kanchan Jena, Hemlata Dei Jena and Malati Lata Jena) and two members of another (Jayant and Abhishek Chhaparia). The order, dated 21 October 2022, does not name the fund manager, whom it calls the FM.

SEBI alleged that the manager, who knew every order the fund was going to place, passed that knowledge to the manager's parents, who set up trading accounts for the noticees at a broker, Progressive Share Brokers. The three Jena accounts belonged to elderly women introduced and verified by the manager's parents. The accounts were alleged to have bought or sold just ahead of the fund's large orders in the same shares, often within seconds or minutes, and to have reversed their positions afterwards for a profit.

The order finds the noticees lent their accounts and so took part in front running, in breach of section 12A of the SEBI Act and the fraud-prevention rules in the PFUTP Regulations, including the provision that specifically covers buying or selling ahead of a client order. It records alleged profits from the common trading days of Rs 53.55 lakh, Rs 23.20 lakh, Rs 26.44 lakh and Rs 31.45 lakh for four of the accounts on NSE, and small additional profits on BSE for two, about Rs 1.38 crore in total.

The penalty was Rs 5 lakh payable jointly and severally by the three Jena noticees and Rs 5 lakh payable jointly and severally by the two Chhaparia noticees, Rs 10 lakh in all. The officer noted that the fund manager and the parents had in December 2021 settled separate proceedings by paying a settlement amount of Rs 2.36 crore and disgorging Rs 1.42 crore plus interest, without admitting or denying the findings, and held that this did not protect the five noticees.

The record does not show whether anyone appealed, whether the penalty was paid, or what became of the Chhaparia accounts beyond the penalty.

This library tags the matter as front running. 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.

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

Timeline

1. 2022-10-21 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.