SEBI v. Jagdish Chandra Sharma (Sobha Ltd insider trading, 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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On 28 October 2022 a SEBI adjudicating officer penalised Jagdish Chandra Sharma, vice chairman and managing director of Sobha Ltd, Rs 10 lakh for buying 3,000 shares on 6 October 2017, shortly before the company announced a strong quarterly real estate sales update. The order puts his notional gain at Rs 2,08,530.

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

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

Sobha Ltd is a real estate developer listed on BSE and NSE. SEBI investigated trading in its shares between 1 September and 30 November 2017 and, on that trading, brought a single proceeding against Jagdish Chandra Sharma, then the company's vice chairman and managing director, a member of its audit committee and a designated employee.

The company announced a quarterly real estate operational update on 6 October 2017 at about 4.43 pm, showing sales volume up 5.6 percent and sales value up 8.3 percent on the previous quarter. SEBI treated the figures as unpublished price sensitive information from 1 October, when the data began to be consolidated, until the announcement, and alleged that Mr Sharma had access to them because they were put to him for approval on the day of the announcement and because he received regular departmental updates on sales.

The record shows that on 6 October 2017, during that window, he bought 3,000 shares on NSE for about Rs 11.7 lakh, at a weighted average price of about Rs 390. He made the required disclosure of the trade and did not trade before or after the window. SEBI alleged breach of section 12A(d) and (e) of the SEBI Act and Regulation 4(1) of the insider trading regulations, with penalty under section 15G(i).

The officer found the charge established and imposed a penalty of Rs 10 lakh, noting a notional gain of Rs 2,08,530, no repetition and no quantifiable investor loss, and describing insider trading as a serious charge. The order sets a 45-day payment period.

The record does not show whether Mr Sharma appealed or paid, or what defence he put on the access and timing points beyond what the order records.

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. 2022-10-28 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.