SEBI v. Utkarsh Jain and others (artificial volume and circular trades, North Eastern Carrying Corporation, 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; 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 February 2023 a SEBI adjudicating officer penalised six individuals and companies a total of Rs 62 lakh over trading in North Eastern Carrying Corporation Ltd shares in late 2016 and early 2017. The order found that the noticees created artificial volume, including through circular trades, which helped two of them exit the stock.

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

6.2m 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 concerns the shares of North Eastern Carrying Corporation Ltd (NECC), traded on the BSE and NSE between 27 December 2016 and 21 April 2017. Six noticees were named: Utkarsh Jain, Vanya Jain, Charamsukh IT Marketing Pvt Ltd, Realstep Agencies Private Ltd, Sairabanu Mohd Rafiq Fanaswala and Malatiben Ashokbhai Darji.

According to the show cause notice of September 2022, Mr Jain and Ms Jain, together with other entities including Charamsukh and Realstep, created fictitious volume and a false appearance of trading in NECC so that the two individuals could exit the stock. Realstep, Ms Fanaswala and Ms Darji were also alleged to have entered into circular trades, meaning trades that did not change beneficial ownership, creating further artificial volume. SEBI relied on section 12A of the SEBI Act and Regulations 3 and 4 of the fraud-on-the-market rules, adding the rule on trades without intention to change ownership for the circular-trade group.

Three of the noticees did not reply to the notice or attend a hearing. The Jains challenged the connection evidence at inspection. The adjudicating officer held the violations established for all six. In setting penalties he noted that no gain or investor loss could be computed and that two of the three repeat parties had earlier penalties, one of them Rs 1 lakh in 2019 and another Rs 5 lakh in December 2022, while some had been given administrative warnings in other stocks.

Under section 15HA the penalties were Rs 10 lakh each for Mr Jain, Ms Jain, Ms Fanaswala and Ms Darji, Rs 7 lakh for Charamsukh and Rs 15 lakh for Realstep, Rs 62 lakh in all, payable within 45 days with recovery proceedings if unpaid. The order carried no market bar and no disgorgement.

The record does not show appeals, payment, the profit made on the exit, or how the entities were linked beyond the connection evidence the order refers to. It describes no criminal case.

This library tags the matter as wash trading and matched orders. 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 2 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.

Timeline

1. 2023-02-21 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.