SEBI v. Amrut Dredging and Shipping Ltd and others (Sarang Chemicals trading group, 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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After a tribunal remand, a SEBI adjudicating officer found in November 2022 that a connected group of 19 traders created artificial volume and raised the price of Sarang Chemicals shares in 2011 by trading among themselves. Penalties of Rs 5 lakh each were imposed on the 19 and Rs 2 lakh each on two brokers, Rs 99 lakh in total.

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

9.9m 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 29 November 2022, covering 21 noticees in the matter of Sarang Chemicals Limited. It was made after the Securities Appellate Tribunal sent an earlier SEBI decision back for fresh consideration. The lead noticee is Amrut Dredging and Shipping Limited (formerly Amrut Securities Limited); the others include several individuals, family-linked entities, and two broking firms, Atlanta Share Shopee and Presilco Impex.

SEBI alleged that 21 entities connected through shared addresses, telephone numbers, off-market share transfers and family ties formed a group that traded the shares between 3 January and 8 June 2011. The group allegedly accounted for about 87 per cent of market volume in the first phase, then sold nearly the whole of the market volume at a higher price in the second. The shares were in the exchange's restricted T group, where price movement is controlled by the exchange, which the noticees had raised in their defence.

The officer found that the nineteen group members traded among themselves, with a defined subset creating a misleading appearance of trading and sixteen moving the price by buying above the last traded price. The order records that 13 of them made unlawful profits of Rs 1,60,76,904 and notes that SEBI's whole-time member had separately ordered that sum disgorged in October 2022. Violations of regulations 3 and 4 of the PFUTP Regulations were established against the nineteen. The two brokers were found to have breached the stock-broker code of conduct by executing roughly four-fifths of the volume without due care. An alleged insider-trading disclosure charge against one noticee was held not established.

Penalties under the SEBI Act were Rs 5,00,000 on each of the nineteen group members (section 15HA) and Rs 2,00,000 on each broker (section 15HB), a total of Rs 99,00,000.

The record does not show whether the penalties were paid or challenged again before the tribunal, whether the disgorgement ordered separately was recovered, or whether any criminal case exists. The order notes a person who was not before it and makes no finding about him.

This library tags the matter as matched orders 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.

• Matched orders — 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.