SEBI v. Mukesh Parekh and Archana Mukesh Parekh (front running Tata Absolute Return Fund, 2022)

Settled

✓ 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 December 2022 SEBI settled with a husband and wife over alleged front running of Tata Absolute Return Fund orders in equity derivatives. They paid a Rs 87.3 lakh settlement amount and disgorged the Rs 68.9 lakh of alleged gains with interest, without admitting or denying the allegations.

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

8.7m 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

Two SEBI whole-time members, Ananth Narayan G. and Ashwani Bhatia, issued this settlement order on 26 December 2022. The applicants were Mukesh Parekh and his wife Archana Mukesh Parekh, in whose trading account the impugned trades took place. Mr Parekh was authorised to trade on her behalf.

SEBI began with a preliminary examination of possible front running of the orders of Tata Absolute Return Fund, a scheme of the registered alternative investment fund Tata AIF, between 1 December 2019 and 10 August 2020. It issued an ad interim ex parte order on 7 August 2020 requiring the applicants to deposit apparent proceeds in escrow and restricting them from the market, confirmed on 30 June 2021, and then a show cause notice dated 27 May 2022.

The notice alleged that Mr Parekh had access to non-public information about the fund's impending orders and that trades in his wife's equity-derivatives account between 17 January and 31 July 2020 consistently ran ahead of them, producing unlawful gains of Rs 68,88,269. It charged violations of section 12A of the SEBI Act and regulations 3 and 4 of the PFUTP Regulations 2003.

The applicants applied to settle under the 2018 settlement regulations, neither admitting nor denying the findings. Of the alleged gains, Rs 66,00,000 had already been disgorged under the 2020 order. The settlement terms were disgorgement of the remaining Rs 2,88,269 with 12 per cent simple interest, Rs 3,61,434 in total, plus a settlement amount of Rs 87,30,881 on a joint and several basis, paid on 11 December 2022. The order closes the matter and bars further action on the same allegations, subject to reopening if a representation proves untrue or an undertaking is breached.

The record does not show how the applicants obtained information about the fund's orders, or whether anyone at the fund or its broker was involved. As a settlement it contains no finding of fact or law. No criminal case is described.

This library tags the matter as front running. 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.

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

Timeline

1. 2022-12-26 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.