SEBI v. Shruti Vora and others (WhatsApp circulation of Tata Motors 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.

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On 16 November 2022 a SEBI adjudicating officer closed a case against four people over a WhatsApp message carrying Tata Motors quarterly figures before they were announced in February 2016, and a trade by one of them. No penalty was imposed, because higher courts had rejected SEBI's case on materially identical facts.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

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Alleged gain

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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

SEBI examined WhatsApp chats seized from members of a group of market contacts after press reports in November 2017 of price sensitive information circulating in private chat groups. This order, dated 16 November 2022, concerns Tata Motors Ltd, listed on BSE and NSE, which announced its December 2015 quarter results on 11 February 2016 at about 3.15 pm. The noticees were Shruti Vora, Aditya Omprakash Gaggar, Shailendra Mehta and Utsav Ajay Kedia.

SEBI alleged that a message giving consolidated revenue, EBITDA and margin figures for the quarter circulated among the first three noticees ahead of the announcement, in breach of section 12A(d) and (e) of the SEBI Act and Regulation 3(1) of the insider trading regulations of 2015. It alleged that Mr Kedia, who received the information from them, bought 500 shares on 11 February 2016, in breach of Regulation 4(1).

The officer did not rule on whether the message was price sensitive information. The order relies on the Securities Appellate Tribunal's ruling of 22 March 2021 in a materially identical WhatsApp matter and the Supreme Court's refusal on 26 September 2022 to interfere, treating the facts for the first three noticees as a replica apart from the company. Because the communication allegation was not established, the order holds that the claim that Mr Kedia traded on the information also fell, and the notices were disposed of without consideration of the merits.

No monetary penalty or other direction was imposed. The order also notes that other adjudicating officers had dropped near-identical proceedings on the same grounds.

The record does not show whether SEBI took further action, or whether the message was genuinely non-public; the order records no profit or loss.

This library tags the matter as insider trading (alleged communication and trading on 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. 2022-11-16 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.