SEBI v. Jalaj Agrawal (bulk SMS stock tips in Panafic Industrials, 2023)

Judgment entered

✓ Checked against the primary document on October 9, 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 January 2023 a SEBI adjudicating officer fined Jalaj Agrawal Rs 15 lakh, finding that he paid for bulk text messages sent to about 4.6 lakh phone numbers in January 2017 urging buyers to take up Panafic Industrials shares with a price target nearly double the quoted level.

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

1.5m 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

The order of 18 January 2023 was made by SEBI adjudicating officer Barnali Mukherjee. The sole noticee is Jalaj Agrawal. The matter is about promotion of the shares of Panafic Industrials Limited, listed on BSE.

SEBI began after complaints about text messages urging investors to buy. It traced one sender code through the telecom operator and a chain of message resellers to a reseller who said the code had been given to Mr Agrawal for a payment of Rs 1,50,000. The messages, sent to about 4,62,883 numbers between 20 and 23 January 2017, called the stock a premium cash call at about Rs 13 with a target of Rs 25, and one of them dropped the name of a well-known investor. Mr Agrawal admitted payments of Rs 4,00,000 and Rs 1,00,000 to the reseller but said they were a transfer arranged for another person in connection with shares of a different company, and denied any involvement in the Panafic messages.

The adjudicating officer rejected his explanation for want of documents and held that he had sent the messages through the reseller's bulk SMS service. He found a breach of section 12A of the SEBI Act and PFUTP Regulations 3 and 4, as the messages were designed to induce investors to trade in Panafic. The order does not describe any trading by Mr Agrawal in Panafic itself, and it treats a past penalty on him over bulk SMS in the shares of another company as a repeat factor.

The penalty was Rs 15,00,000 under section 15HA, payable within 45 days. The order records that gain and investor loss were not quantified.

The record does not show who profited from the promotion, the price effect, or whether the penalty was appealed.

This library tags the matter as pump and dump, on the basis of the promotional messaging alone. The order does not show who sold into the demand. 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.

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

Timeline

1. 2023-01-18 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
• SEBI order (PDF)

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.