SEBI v. Minal Bharat Patel and others (Asian Granito India Ltd, synchronised trades, remand, 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 June 2023, on a fresh hearing ordered by the Securities Appellate Tribunal, a SEBI whole-time member dropped a case against four related noticees over 32 synchronised trades in Asian Granito India shares spread across 2011 to 2014, finding the low frequency did not show manipulative intent. A 2021 order had fined each Rs 10 lakh and barred them for a year.

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 final order was issued on 19 June 2023 by Ananta Barua, a whole-time member of SEBI, after the Securities Appellate Tribunal set aside SEBI's earlier final order of October 2021 on 20 March 2023 and remitted the matter. The four noticees are Minal Bharat Patel, Pasha Finance Private Limited, Ruchit Bharat Patel and Pat Financial Consultant Private Limited. A sixth entity, Bharat J Patel, had died and the case against him abated; another company in the original show cause notice was not among the appellants.

The case concerns synchronised trading in the shares of Asian Granito India Ltd. SEBI had alleged breaches of section 12A of the SEBI Act and the PFUTP Regulations 3 and 4(2)(a) and (g). Under the earlier order each noticee had been fined Rs 10 lakh and barred from dealing for a year. The tribunal remitted the case partly because the noticees had not appeared at a physical hearing held during the pandemic and had raised delay in issuing the show cause notice.

On reconsideration the whole-time member counted 32 impugned trades on only eight trading days in an investigation period of almost three years. He noted that the investigation findings did not show any effect on the price of the stock, that the noticees had also made many more non-synchronised trades, and that the passage of time since 2011 to 2014 made it hard for them to explain the trades. He concluded that the low frequency and dispersion of the trades did not show concerted manipulative intent.

The proceedings against the four noticees were disposed of without any directions, so no penalty or bar now stands from this matter. The earlier penalties of Rs 10 lakh each therefore no longer apply under this order.

The record does not show whether SEBI appealed this outcome or what happened to the earlier penalties if paid. The matter involved no gain or loss figure.

This library tags the matter as matched orders (synchronised trades); the allegation was not sustained on remand. 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.

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

Timeline

1. 2023-06-19 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.