SEBI v. Yatendra Kumar and others (insider trading, Wockhardt Ltd, 2023)

Judgment entered

✓ 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 a SEBI whole-time member found that a Wockhardt research president sold shares in 2013 after learning of a US FDA Form 483 for the company's Waluj plant and before the import alert became public, avoiding a loss of Rs 14,23,074. He was ordered to disgorge that sum with interest and was barred for six months; the case against two junior colleagues was not made out.

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. The noticees are three Wockhardt Ltd employees: Yatendra Kumar, president for pharma research, global intellectual property, quality and regulatory affairs; Girish Kumar Jain, senior vice president for pharma research, who reported to him; and Shashikant Tiwari, a general manager in analytical development. The shares trade on NSE and BSE.

SEBI's show cause notice of September 2022 alleged breach of Regulation 3(i) of the old PIT Regulations of 1992. It said the US Food and Drug Administration issued a Form 483 of adverse observations on the company's Waluj plant on 22 March 2013, that the company disclosed an import alert only on 24 May 2013 and a warning letter on 22 July 2013, and that the three noticees sold shares in between while in possession of unpublished price-sensitive information. The stock fell about 6.5 per cent on the day of the first announcement and about 9 per cent on the day of the second.

The order finds Mr Kumar was a connected person and an insider: he was a designated employee, supported the plant's regulatory responses, and accepted in a reply that he learned of the Form 483 on 22 March 2013. It finds he sold 6,841 shares during the period and avoided a loss of Rs 14,23,074. It found that Mr Jain and Mr Tiwari could not reasonably be expected to have the information, because their roles did not tie them to the plant's inspection, so no violation was established against them.

The directions for Mr Kumar are disgorgement of Rs 14,23,074 with simple interest at 4 per cent a year from 15 April 2013, a six-month bar from the securities market, and a separate one-year bar from dealing in Wockhardt securities, running concurrently. The order made no monetary penalty, and the delay in bringing the case was treated as a reason to moderate the bar and interest.

The order is an administrative sanction, not a criminal judgment, and the record shows no criminal case. It does not show whether Mr Kumar appealed or paid.

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. 2023-06-19 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.