SEBI v. PFL Infotech Ltd and others (PFL Infotech 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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In November 2022 a SEBI chief general manager found that the chairman of PFL Infotech sold shares while connected investors, trading through a connected broker, pushed up the share price. Five noticees were penalised Rs 10 lakh jointly under the fraud provisions and the chairman was ordered to disgorge Rs 9,61,722 with interest.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

—

Alleged gain

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Penalty as published

1.1m 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 chief general manager Geetha G. issued this final order on 28 November 2022. The company is PFL Infotech Ltd, listed on BSE. The nine noticees were the company, its chairman and managing director Pulla Amresh Kumar, Abhinandan Jain, Nickunj Shah (deceased), Ashroj Credit India Private Ltd, Mahesh Meetal HUF, the broker Fair Intermediate Investment Private Ltd, and two individual traders, Rahul Gupta and Parvinder Singh.

The proceedings arose from BSE examination reports and an Income Tax Department query about the rise in the share price between 2013 and 2016. SEBI's investigation found that eight of the ten largest net buyers were connected with one another, and that certain entities contributed heavily to upward moves in the last traded price. The show cause notice of 2 September 2021 alleged violations of the PFUTP Regulations 2003, broker code-of-conduct breaches by the broker, and disclosure failures by others.

The order finds that Ashroj, Mahesh Meetal HUF and the broker, which were connected to one another, carried out manipulative trades to raise the price. It finds that Mr Kumar sold shares at a large profit while this was happening and that Mr Jain was the link between him and the manipulators. All five were held to have jointly employed a fraudulent scheme under the PFUTP Regulations and section 12A of the SEBI Act.

Sanctions: Mr Kumar, Mr Jain, Ashroj and Mahesh Meetal HUF were restrained from the securities market for one year, and the broker was barred from proprietary trading for one month and warned. Mr Kumar must disgorge Rs 9,61,722 with 12 per cent annual interest from 19 May 2014. A penalty of Rs 10,00,000 was imposed jointly and severally on the five under section 15HA, and Mr Kumar separately incurred Rs 1,00,000 for disclosure failures, so the penalties total Rs 11,00,000. The proceedings against the company and Mr Shah ended without directions, and Mr Gupta and Mr Parvinder Singh were not penalised because no link to the others or to the counterparties was shown.

The record does not show whether the order was appealed or the sums paid. Investor losses are not quantified, and the order 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.