SEBI v. Asthvinayak Trexim Pvt. Ltd and others (circular trades and bulk-SMS promotion, V B Industries, 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 31 individuals and companies a combined Rs 1.63 crore in January 2023 over trading in V B Industries Ltd shares in April and May 2018. The order found circular, reversal and small-lot trades that created false volume ahead of a bulk SMS tip campaign, and found that a marketing firm ran that campaign.

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

16.3m 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 case began with bulk text messages sent on 7 May 2018 from a sender header recommending purchase of shares of V B Industries Ltd (VBIL), a stock listed on the BSE and the Calcutta Stock Exchange. SEBI investigated trading between 9 April and 16 May 2018 and named 32 noticees. The order was issued in January 2023 by an adjudicating officer under section 15-I of the SEBI Act, with penalties sought under section 15HA.

SEBI alleged three things. First, that directors of several Kolkata-area trading companies, and one company itself, along with eight net-buyer accounts, created artificial volume in the thinly traded stock so that sellers could exit. Second, that a further 13 noticees carried out circular and reversal trades on many days before the SMS campaign without intending to change ownership. Third, that one noticee, Biz Buddy Media Marketing, was linked to the SMS sender and ran a campaign and website circulating misleading information about the stock. Two noticees were also accused of using small-lot trades to move the price.

The adjudicating officer held the allegations established against all noticees other than Noticee 20, who had died, citing section 12A of the SEBI Act and Regulations 3 and 4 of the fraud-on-the-market rules. She found no quantifiable gain or investor loss on the record. She treated eight noticees as repeat offenders because earlier adjudication orders had penalised them for manipulative trades in other stocks, and treated the SMS campaign as misleading investors in its own right.

Penalties under section 15HA were Rs 6 lakh each for eight noticees with earlier orders against them and Rs 5 lakh each for the other 23, Rs 1.63 crore in total, payable within 45 days with recovery proceedings if unpaid. No market bar or disgorgement was ordered. The proceeding as to the deceased noticee was left to his legal heir receiving a copy.

The record does not show appeals, payment, who actually profited from the share price move, or whether the persons behind the SMS sender were pursued. It describes no criminal case.

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

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.