SEBI v. Harshad Ravilal Shah and others (Galactico Corporate Services, price manipulation allegation, 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 May 2023 a SEBI adjudicating officer rejected the allegation that three related individuals pushed up the price of Galactico Corporate Services shares by trading among themselves, finding no proof of a prior understanding. A separate Rs 2,00,000 penalty fell on the company's promoter for late insider-trading disclosures.

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 adjudication order was issued on 25 May 2023 by Amit Kapoor, a SEBI adjudicating officer. It concerns trading in Galactico Corporate Services Ltd, a merchant banker listed on the BSE SME platform and later moved to the main board, between 25 January and 18 August 2021, a period in which the price rose from about Rs 23 to about Rs 99.50 on low volume.

SEBI alleged that Harshad Ravilal Shah, Mayur Ravilal Shah and Neeta Harshad Shah, who shared addresses and phone details and had bank transfers between them, traded among themselves and thereby contributed to positive last-traded-price movements. They were said to have accounted for about 41 per cent of the market's positive price contribution, with 74 trades among themselves, 43 of them raising the price. The alleged violations were of section 12A of the SEBI Act and the PFUTP Regulations. A fourth noticee, promoter Vipul Dileep Lathi, who sold 1,38,000 shares, was charged separately with failing to disclose trades under Regulation 7(2)(a) of the PIT Regulations.

The adjudicating officer found the price-manipulation charge not made out. The trades were also at negative and zero price contributions, large time gaps separated the matching orders, no outside order was available to match, and nothing else showed a prior meeting of minds. The officer accepted that the company's results were improving, and held that creating a last-traded price movement alone is not fraud under the PFUTP Regulations.

The show cause notice was therefore disposed of against the first three noticees without penalty. For Mr Lathi, the order found five late disclosures during the period and imposed Rs 2,00,000 under section 15A(b) of the SEBI Act. That penalty is for a disclosure failure, not for any trading abuse, and is not recorded here as the penalty for the matter.

The record does not show whether SEBI appealed the dismissal, whether the Rs 2,00,000 penalty was paid, or any criminal case. Gains and losses were not quantified.

This library tags the matter as price manipulation and matched orders; the order did not sustain the allegation. 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.

• Price manipulation — 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. 2023-05-25 SEBI 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
• Order (PDF)

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.