SEBI v. Alps Motor Finance Limited and others (preferential-issue proceeds, 2023)
Judgment entered
Checked against the primary document on October 9, 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.
On 23 May 2023 a SEBI adjudicating officer penalised Alps Motor Finance and two of its directors a combined Rs 41 lakh for misusing the proceeds of six preferential share allotments made in mid-2013 and for the related fraud-prevention breaches.
The record
| Agency | SEBI (India) |
|---|---|
| Date filed | 2023-05-23 |
| Date resolved | 2023-05-23 |
| Court | SEBI adjudicating officer |
| Status | judgment |
| Asset class | equities |
| Instruments | Alps Motor Finance Limited shares |
| Venue | BSE |
| Criminal parallel | No |
| Defendants | Alps Motor Finance Limited ; Brij Kishore Sabharwal ; Himanshu Agarwal |
| Techniques | Misleading issuer disclosure |
What was ordered
- Civil penalty
- —
- Disgorgement
- —
- Prejudgment interest
- —
- Total relief
- —
- Alleged gain
- —
- Penalty as published
- 4.1m INR
What is alleged to have happened
The order was issued on 23 May 2023 by SEBI adjudicating officer Amit Kapoor under the SEBI Act and the Securities Contracts (Regulation) Act. The noticees are Alps Motor Finance Limited, a company listed on the BSE, and two people who were its directors in 2013, Brij Kishore Sabharwal and Himanshu Agarwal.
SEBI's investigation examined six preferential allotments made between June and August 2013 that raised about Rs 7 crore. SEBI alleged that the company used roughly three quarters of the money for interest-free loans to three outside entities, and that those entities passed the funds on to other parties, so the money did not go to the objects the company had stated. It alleged breach of Regulations 3 and 4 of the PFUTP Regulations 2003 and section 12A of the SEBI Act by all three, and a breach of the listing-agreement requirement to report variations in use of proceeds by the company.
The noticees replied through counsel and the company argued that the funds had been used for the stated objects. The adjudicating officer weighed the loan chains and the company's reporting and found the violations established against all three. In setting the penalty the officer noted that the investor loss was put at more than Rs 5 crore, that no gain figure was available, and that the company and Mr Sabharwal had been penalised by SEBI before, while nothing was recorded against Mr Agarwal.
The penalties were Rs 1 lakh and Rs 5 lakh on the company for the listing and PFUTP breaches respectively, Rs 20 lakh on Mr Sabharwal and Rs 15 lakh on Mr Agarwal, a total of Rs 41 lakh, payable within 45 days. No trading restriction was imposed in this order.
The record does not show whether anyone appealed or paid, whether the diverted money was recovered, or how the share price behaved.
This library tags the matter as misleading issuer disclosure. 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.
- Misleading issuer disclosure — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.
Timeline
- 2023-05-23 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.
Related actions
Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.