SEBI v. Shanta Rathi and Biradar Khande Rao (Sawaca Business Machines, 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 decided ex parte in November 2022 that two linked Hyderabad traders created a misleading appearance of trading and lifted the price of Sawaca Business Machines on BSE, mainly through trades with each other and a few self-trades. Penalties of Rs 5 lakh and Rs 7 lakh were imposed.

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

1.2m 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 Geetha G. of SEBI issued this order on 29 November 2022. The noticees were two Hyderabad individuals, Shanta Rathi and Biradar Khande Rao, and the shares concerned were those of Sawaca Business Machines Limited, traded on BSE. SEBI had looked at trading from January 2012 to May 2017 and focused on one stretch from 16 May 2013 to 20 February 2014.

SEBI alleged that the two, linked by a shared mobile number in the account-opening data, created a false appearance of trading and moved the price. In that stretch Ms Rathi was the largest contributor to upward movements in the last traded price and Mr Rao the second largest. Of her buys, 14 trades were against Mr Rao as seller and three were self-trades, and 9 of his 27 buys were against her. Together the trades accounted for about 9.6 per cent of the market's positive price movement.

Neither noticee replied to the show cause notice or attended the hearings, so the officer proceeded ex parte and treated the charges as unrebutted. The order concludes that the pattern showed a meeting of minds to trade between themselves without a real change of ownership, producing artificial volume and a higher price. It finds violations of the PFUTP Regulations 2003 (regulations 3 and 4) with section 12A of the SEBI Act.

Under section 15HA the officer imposed Rs 5,00,000 on Ms Rathi and Rs 7,00,000 on Mr Rao, Rs 12,00,000 in all. The order notes that Ms Rathi's profit from the trades was Rs 56,697 and Mr Rao's was Rs 2,06,745, and that the investors' losses are not specified in the record. No disgorgement or market bar was ordered.

The record does not show whether either penalty was paid or appealed, or whether any criminal case exists.

This library tags the matter as wash trading and 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 2 techniques 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.

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

Timeline

1. 2022-11-29 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.