SEBI v. Santosh Maruti Patil (Spectacle Industries, 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. 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.
On remand from the Securities Appellate Tribunal, a SEBI adjudicating officer again fined an individual Rs 3 lakh in December 2022 for helping create artificial volume in Spectacle Industries shares in 2009-10 as part of a group that traded among itself, including self-trades. His trades were a very small share of market volume.
The record
| Agency | SEBI (India) |
|---|---|
| Date filed | 2022-12-16 |
| Date resolved | 2022-12-16 |
| Court | SEBI adjudicating officer |
| Status | judgment |
| Asset class | equities |
| Instruments | Spectacle Industries Ltd shares |
| Venue | BSE, NSE |
| Criminal parallel | No |
| Defendants | Santosh Maruti Patil |
| Techniques | Wash trading , Matched orders , Price manipulation |
What was ordered
- Civil penalty
- —
- Disgorgement
- —
- Prejudgment interest
- —
- Total relief
- —
- Alleged gain
- —
- Penalty as published
- 300k INR
What is alleged to have happened
Adjudicating officer Dr Anitha Anoop of SEBI issued this order on 16 December 2022 against one noticee, Santosh Maruti Patil, in the matter of Spectacle Industries Limited (now Spectacle Ventures Ltd), listed on BSE and NSE. SEBI had noticed a sharp rise in the traded volume and price of the shares: from Rs 41 to Rs 122.65 between 29 May 2009 and 30 April 2010, and from Rs 21.75 to Rs 162.80 from May 2010 to January 2011.
Earlier SEBI adjudication orders of 2014 penalised Mr Patil and others, the Securities Appellate Tribunal set them aside in 2015 for defective notices, and a fresh order of February 2020 imposed Rs 3 lakh. The tribunal on 22 July 2022 again set that aside and sent the matter back for a fresh hearing, in part because SEBI had let another member of the group off for tiny trades.
SEBI alleged that Mr Patil belonged to what the order calls the Pabari-Parikh group, which traded among itself and created artificial volume. The order finds him connected to the group, and rejects his claim that his documents were misused and signatures forged. It finds that he bought and sold about 3.29 lakh shares within the group, 0.19 per cent of market volume, made synchronised trades of 0.01 per cent of volume, made self-trades in 13,363 shares, and placed buy and sell orders for over a lakh shares each within a minute of one another. It concludes the dealings had no change of beneficial ownership and no plausible justification, and violated regulations 3 and 4 of the PFUTP Regulations 2003.
The officer imposed a penalty of Rs 3,00,000 under section 15HA of the SEBI Act, noting that the record shows no specific profit or investor loss but that the group as a whole contributed significantly to artificial volume.
The record does not show whether the order was appealed again, whether payment was made, or what penalties other group members received in this order. No criminal case is described.
This library tags the matter as wash trading, 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 3 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.
- 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
- 2022-12-16 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.
Related actions
Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.