SEBI v. Nishant Jain and others (synchronised and circular trades, BFL Asset Finvest, 2023)

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.

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A SEBI adjudicating officer penalised 15 people and entities Rs 89 lakh in total in January 2023 over trading in BFL Asset Finvest Ltd shares on the BSE. She found that groups of linked accounts used synchronised, circular and reversal trades and token-sized orders to lift the price and create a misleading appearance of activity.

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

8.9m 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

The matter concerns trading in the shares of BFL Asset Finvest Ltd (earlier BFL Developers Ltd), listed on the BSE since February 2016, between February 2016 and June 2017. SEBI began adjudication under section 15HA of the SEBI Act after an investigation. Fifteen noticees were named, split by SEBI into a first group around Nishant Jain, Pradeep Kumar Jain, Dharmendra Kumar Jain and Jaipur Infragold Private Limited, and a second group of nine other individuals, with Rajiv Maheshwari treated separately.

A March 2022 show cause notice alleged that the first group's trades were synchronised to create artificial volume and that Mr Nishant Jain and Jaipur Infragold placed tiny orders again and again, often the only trades of the day, to hold up the price. It alleged that the nine second-group noticees traded among themselves in synchronised, circular and reversal trades that did not change beneficial ownership, and that several of them supplied large shares of the net price rise in one phase. It alleged Mr Maheshwari placed the first order each day in minimal quantity at rising prices, against sellers from the first group. It also noted that one account in the first group was operated from a terminal belonging to a broker where Mr Nishant Jain was a promoter and director.

The adjudicating officer held the charges established under section 12A of the SEBI Act and Regulations 3 and 4 of the fraud-on-the-market rules, finding that the noticees manipulated price and volume and created a misleading appearance of trading. She found no quantifiable gain or investor loss on the record and no repetition, but said the conduct merited a stiff penalty to deter such behaviour.

The order imposed Rs 30 lakh jointly and severally on the five noticees in the first group, Rs 54 lakh jointly and severally on the nine in the second group, and Rs 5 lakh on Mr Maheshwari alone, Rs 89 lakh in all, payable within 45 days. It carried no market bar and no disgorgement.

The record does not show appeals, payment, or how the penalty was shared among the joint payers. It does not state a profit figure and describes no criminal case.

This library tags the matter as matched orders, wash trading 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.

• Matched orders — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.
• Wash trading — 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. 2023-01-31 SEBI adjudication 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.