SEBI v. Sasidhar V (Taurus Mutual Fund redemption time-stamp tampering, 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; 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.
On 27 June 2023 a SEBI whole-time member, re-deciding after a tribunal remand, found that a Taurus Mutual Fund customer-service head took part in tampering with a date-and-time stamping machine so that some investors redeemed at a pre-markdown NAV, and imposed the minimum penalty of Rs 5 lakh.
The record
| Agency | SEBI (India) |
|---|---|
| Date filed | 2023-06-27 |
| Date resolved | 2023-06-27 |
| Court | SEBI whole-time member |
| Status | judgment |
| Asset class | mutual funds |
| Instruments | Taurus Mutual Fund debt schemes |
| Criminal parallel | No |
| Defendants | Sasidhar V |
| Techniques |
What was ordered
- Civil penalty
- —
- Disgorgement
- —
- Prejudgment interest
- —
- Total relief
- —
- Alleged gain
- —
- Penalty as published
- 500k INR
What is alleged to have happened
This is a final order by SEBI whole-time member Ananta Barua, passed on 27 June 2023 under sections 11 and 11B of the SEBI Act. The only noticee is Sasidhar V, who was head of customer service at Taurus Mutual Fund. The Securities Appellate Tribunal had quashed SEBI's August 2020 order against him because he had not been given the investigation report, and sent the matter back for a fresh decision.
SEBI's allegation concerned four Taurus debt schemes that held commercial paper of Ballarpur Industries. The issuer defaulted around 20 February 2017, and the fund marked the holdings down to zero on 22 February 2017, cutting the net asset value. SEBI's inspection of the fund's date-and-time stamping machine found redemption forms dated 17 February 2017 whose serial numbers ran out of time order, including four numbered after a 5:39 pm stamp but stamped around 2:51 pm. The forms were for full redemptions by persons related to a former Taurus sales head.
The order examines the machine vendor's account and the noticee's arguments, including that no safekeeping policy for the machine existed and that he had been at work until January 2018. It finds the noticee knew the machine password, rejects the vendor's claim that the sequence could not be altered, and concludes that he was involved in the tampering, which gave certain investors an undue benefit by letting them redeem at the higher NAV. It holds that he violated Regulations 3(a) and 4(1) of the PFUTP Regulations 2003.
Because he was not key management, no gain to him was alleged, no investor loss was shown and the default was not repeated, the order imposes the statutory minimum penalty of Rs 5 lakh under section 15HA, payable within 45 days. No market restriction was imposed.
The record does not show whether he appealed again, who else was penalised in related orders, or the size of the benefit to the redeeming investors.
This library does not assign a technique tag to the matter, because no technique in the library fits the conduct. 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.
Timeline
- 2023-06-27 SEBI whole-time member final order on remand
Primary documents
Everything on this page derives from the documents below. Where our summary and the primary document disagree, the primary document is right.