SEBI v. Jayeshbhai Chandubhai Patel and another (alleged tipping, 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 a SEBI adjudicating officer closed a case against the chairman and managing director of Vimal Oil & Foods Ltd and an independent director without imposing any penalty. SEBI had alleged they tipped relatives about the company's deteriorating finances ahead of a 2015 loss announcement, but the officer found no proof that anything was communicated.

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

This is the tipper-side proceeding in the same inquiry as a separate order of 24 March 2023 against the people alleged to have traded. Vimal Oil & Foods Ltd (VOFL) was listed on the NSE and BSE and announced a net loss of Rs 6,205.20 lakh for the quarter to 30 June 2015 on 27 August 2015, after its share price had already slid from Rs 136.55 to Rs 80.65. SEBI treated the company's worsening finances, including loan defaults to four banks, as unpublished price sensitive information.

The noticees were Jayeshbhai Chandubhai Patel, VOFL's chairman and managing director, and Mukesh N. Patel, an independent director who chaired its audit committee. The notice of September 2021 alleged that Mr Jayeshbhai Patel passed the information, through his mother who was a promoter, to Jyotiben Kantilal Patel, who sold shares in the window and sent proceeds to his mother, and that Mukesh Patel passed it to his father, who also sold and sent the money onwards.

The adjudicating officer accepted that both noticees were insiders with access to the information. But, relying on the Supreme Court's April 2022 ruling in Balram Garg, she held there was no evidence that the information was actually communicated to the traders, and that trading patterns or family relationships cannot by themselves prove communication. She also noted that SEBI's separate order of 24 March 2023 had found the alleged recipients not shown to have held the information.

She therefore found no cogent material to prove a breach of section 12A(d) and (e) of the SEBI Act or Regulation 3(1) of the insider trading rules, and disposed of the notice without penalty.

This record is a dismissal. It does not show whether SEBI appealed, and it describes no criminal case.

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. 2023-03-31 SEBI adjudication order disposing of the notice without penalty

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.