SEBI v. Ambalal Jhaverbhai Patel and others (Econo Trade (India) 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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On 29 December 2023 a SEBI adjudicating officer penalised 25 of 32 noticees a combined Rs 1.69 crore over trading in the shares of Econo Trade (India) Ltd. The order found most of them had traded among themselves in reversal trades and price-setting trades, and penalised one noticee for ignoring investigation summonses.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

—

Alleged gain

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Penalty as published

16.9m INR

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. This regulator states penalties in INR. The figure is recorded as published and is not converted, so it does not appear in the USD totals or medians used elsewhere on this site.

What is alleged to have happened

The adjudication order of 29 December 2023 concerns trading in the shares of Econo Trade (India) Ltd between late 2016 and early 2017. It names 32 noticees, a mix of individuals, private companies and one LLP, led alphabetically by Ambalal Jhaverbhai Patel. A further 20 noticees are named in the order beyond the first twelve listed in this record's defendant list.

SEBI alleged that the noticees were grouped into trading clusters that traded with each other in reversal trades, in which the same parties or related parties buy and sell back and forth, inflating volume without a change in beneficial ownership. It also alleged that they set or raised the last traded price through their orders, and that they thereby breached section 12A of the SEBI Act and the fraud and unfair-practice regulations of 2003. Two noticees, a company and an individual, were separately accused of not responding to SEBI summonses; the individual was also linked in the investigation to a website and phone number used to urge people to buy the stock.

The adjudicating officer abated the proceedings against six noticees without deciding the merits and gave one company the benefit of doubt on the non-cooperation charge because the summonses had gone to an out-of-date email address. For the rest, the order found that the alleged reversal and price-contribution trading was established, and treated several of the noticees as having acted in concert, relying in part on the flow of funds between them. The order records that some of the noticees had been penalised in earlier matters.

The order imposed individual penalties under section 15HA of the SEBI Act on 24 noticees, ranging from Rs 5 lakh to Rs 8 lakh each, and a Rs 10 lakh penalty under section 15A(a) on the individual who did not answer summonses. Together the penalties come to Rs 1.69 crore. The order states that the record did not quantify any gain made or loss caused to investors, and gave 45 days to pay.

The record does not show whether any noticee appealed to the Securities Appellate Tribunal, whether the penalties were paid, or whether the website and phone calls led to separate action. It describes no criminal case.

This library tags the matter as matched orders and price manipulation. 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.

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

Timeline

1. 2023-12-29 SEBI adjudication 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.