SEBI v. Jyotiben Kantilal Patel and others (insider trading allegation, Vimal Oil & Foods, 2023)

Dismissed

✓ 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 March 2023 SEBI's chief general manager closed an insider trading case over sales of Vimal Oil & Foods Ltd shares before a loss-making quarter was announced in 2015. She found no evidence of how two sellers got the information and none showing the promoter who received the money was an insider, so she issued no directions.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

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Alleged gain

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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.

What is alleged to have happened

Vimal Oil & Foods Ltd (VOFL) was listed on the BSE and NSE. On 27 August 2015, after market hours, it announced a net loss of Rs 6,205 lakh for the June 2015 quarter, against a small profit in the previous quarter and a profit a year earlier. The share price had already fallen from Rs 136.55 on 1 July 2015 to Rs 80.65. SEBI also found that the company had defaulted on loans of several banks, so it treated the whole period from 1 July to 27 August 2015 as one in which price sensitive information existed.

SEBI's notice of July 2021 named three people. It said Jyotiben Kantilal Patel and Narayanbhai M Patel, who it called connected persons, sold significant numbers of shares in that window and so avoided losses, and that they moved the sale proceeds to the bank account of Kantaben Chandubhai Patel, a promoter and the mother of the company's chairman and managing director. It alleged that the first two breached Regulation 4(1) of the 2015 insider trading rules and that Mrs Kantaben Patel breached Regulation 3(1), which covers communicating such information. Their settlement applications were rejected after they did not submit revised terms.

In her order of 24 March 2023 the officer relied on the Supreme Court's April 2022 Balram Garg decision, which says the burden lies on the regulator to show possession of unpublished information and that communication cannot be presumed from proximity or trading patterns. She accepted that the first two may have traded in the windows, but found no evidence of how they came to hold the information, and found the third noticee was not a connected person and so not an insider.

She therefore held no violation made out against any of the three and disposed of the notice without directions or penalty.

This record is a dismissal. It does not show whether SEBI appealed, and it describes no criminal case. The company went into liquidation, as the noticees themselves pointed out, which this order does not treat as relevant to the outcome.

This library tags the matter as insider trading. 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.

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

Timeline

1. 2023-03-24 SEBI order disposing of the show cause notice without directions

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.