SEBI v. Ashlesh Gunvantbhai Shah HUF and others (Interactive Financial Services price manipulation, 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 found in November 2022 that two buyers pushed up the price of Interactive Financial Services Ltd by placing limit buy orders at the upper price band and setting new highs, and fined them Rs 5 lakh jointly. Allegations against the promoters, a connected employee and a bulk-SMS provider were not established.

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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Penalty as published

500k 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

Adjudicating officer Barnali Mukherjee of SEBI issued this order on 28 November 2022. It covers seven noticees over trading in Interactive Financial Services Limited between 1 November and 15 December 2020: Udayan Mandavia, Hitesh Joshi, Kedar Mehta and Dimple Pandey (described as promoters, directors or connected persons who sold shares), Ashlesh Gunvantbhai Shah HUF and Saurin Jayantilal Shah (buyers), and Webczar Solutions (a bulk-SMS service provider).

SEBI alleged a scheme under which the two buyers lifted the last traded price and set new high prices through first trades of the day, bulk SMS messages lured retail investors and created volume, and the first four noticees sold their holdings into the rally. The scrip price rose from about Rs 13 on 3 November 2020 to about Rs 25 by 23 November. The alleged provisions were regulations 3 and 4 of the PFUTP Regulations 2003 with section 12A of the SEBI Act.

The officer found the case proved against the two buyers only. On the order's account they placed limit buy orders at the upper circuit price on most trading days between 10 and 18 November 2020, when there were few sellers, gave no sound trading rationale, and together accounted for a large share of the new-high-price and first-trade price gains. The officer treated the trading pattern and intent as decisive despite the small volumes.

The officer gave the benefit of doubt to the other five. There was no cogent evidence linking the sellers to the buyers, and the SMS provider was not shown to have circulated messages recommending the shares or to be connected to the sellers. A joint and several penalty of Rs 5,00,000 was imposed on the two buyers under section 15HA of the SEBI Act. The order records no quantified gain or investor loss and no repeat conduct.

The record does not show whether the penalty was paid or appealed, how much profit the buyers made, or whether anyone behind the bulk messages was identified. It describes no criminal case.

This library tags the matter as price manipulation. 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.

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

Timeline

1. 2022-11-28 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.