SEBI v. Surjit Kumar Gupta and others (insider trading allegation, Havells India Ltd, 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 a SEBI chief general manager rejected allegations that a Havells India promoter-director passed advance knowledge of the company's December 2020 quarter results to his son-in-law, who with his own father then traded. The internal flash report held no extraordinary information and the traders' pattern was not unusual, so the notice was disposed of without directions.

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 28 June 2023 by K. Saravanan, a chief general manager at SEBI. The noticees are Surjit Kumar Gupta, a promoter and director of Havells India Ltd, his son-in-law Ajay Kumar Gupta, and Ajay Kumar Gupta's father, Sadhu Ram Gupta. Havells shares trade on NSE and BSE. The investigation period ran from 1 December 2020 to 26 February 2021.

SEBI's show cause notice of February 2023 alleged that a monthly flash report on the company's financials, circulated internally on 1 January 2021 to designated individuals including Surjit Kumar Gupta, was unpublished price-sensitive information about results for the quarter ended 31 December 2020. The results were announced on 20 January 2021 after market hours, and the share rose about 10.96 per cent the next day. SEBI said the son-in-law, who ran an unlisted cable company that bought from Havells and so counted as a connected person, spoke by phone with the director during the period, procured the information, traded on it and passed it to his father.

The order does not accept that case. It finds that the flash report did not contain information extraordinary enough to qualify as unpublished price-sensitive information, since similar reports circulated monthly. It finds no sufficient evidence that anything was communicated on the calls, and finds no unusual trading pattern: the son-in-law and his father had large equity and derivatives dealings in many years and in Havells before and after the period.

On that basis the allegations under section 12A(d) and (e) of the SEBI Act and the PIT Regulations were held not substantiated and the show cause notice was disposed of against all three without any directions, penalty or bar.

The record does not show whether SEBI appealed. The order records allegations and a finding that they failed; it says nothing about any gain.

This library tags the matter as insider trading; the allegation was not sustained. 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. 2023-06-28 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.