SEBI v. Shailesh Lalman Ojha and others (Radford Global, review order, 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 December 2022 a SEBI whole-time member reviewed four adjudication orders that had let five sellers of Radford Global shares go unpenalised, found them erroneous, and imposed penalties of Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh each, Rs 3 lakh in all, for restricting supply to push the price up.

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

300k 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 whole-time member S.K. Mohanty issued this order on 29 December 2022 under section 15I(3) of the SEBI Act, which lets SEBI review an adjudicating officer's order it finds erroneous and prejudicial to the market. The noticees were Shailesh Lalman Ojha, Sangita Pramod Harlalka, Rajeev Garg, Artiben S Kansara and Manisha Jayesh Shah, in the matter of Radford Global Ltd.

SEBI began with a BSE reference about a very large rise in price and volume in the stock between February 2012 and May 2013, and interim orders in 2014 and 2015 restraining 123 entities. After investigation SEBI found that the price rise in the first phase, to January 2013, came mainly from these five sellers, who sold small quantities even though they held enough shares and many buy orders were waiting. A market-regulatory order of August 2019 had already found the same violations and restrained two of the five for six months and treated the restraints already served by the other three as enough.

In parallel, the adjudicating officer decided in four orders in 2020 that without collusion between buyers and sellers it was hard to accept that the five had manipulated the price, and imposed no penalty. SEBI reviewed these and issued a fresh notice on 29 May 2020. The whole-time member held the earlier orders erroneous: the trading pattern and intent could establish manipulation even without proven connections, and the stock had been suspended for years, so investors could not tell from company disclosures whether a high price was justified. The member relied on a tribunal decision about a different, actively traded stock, which he found distinguishable.

Under section 15HA he imposed Rs 1,00,000 on Mr Garg and Rs 50,000 each on the others, Rs 3,00,000 in all. The notice did not quantify gain or investor loss, and there was no repeat violation alleged. The amounts are small because the order set them in light of the restraints already served.

The record does not show whether the review order was appealed or the penalties paid. No criminal case is described.

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. 2022-12-29 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.