SEBI v. Abhijit Pawar (Magma Fincorp insider trading, 2024)

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 16 January 2024 a SEBI whole-time member penalised Abhijit Pawar Rs 10 lakh for passing on, and having another man trade on, advance news of the Poonawalla Group's takeover of Magma Fincorp. He revoked earlier interim restrictions because the man who traded had already disgorged his gains.

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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Penalty as published

1m 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

This final order of 16 January 2024 was issued by a whole-time member of the Securities and Exchange Board of India against one noticee, Abhijit Pawar. It follows a show cause notice of September 2022 that named seven people in all over trading in the shares of Magma Fincorp Ltd, now Poonawalla Fincorp Ltd, ahead of a takeover announcement.

On 10 February 2021 Magma announced that the Poonawalla Group would take a controlling stake through a preferential allotment of about Rs 3,456 crore. SEBI treated the plan as unpublished price sensitive information from 11 January 2021. The price closed at its upper limit on each of the nine trading days it examined after the announcement.

SEBI alleged that Mr Pawar, who owned a financial-media business, had independent access to the information, spoke often with its chief executive, Rakesh Bhojgadhiya, and funded his purchases of Magma shares. It said Mr Bhojgadhiya traded for himself and his family company and later sent the profits to a company controlled by Mr Pawar as a share subscription. Mr Bhojgadhiya in turn was said to have passed the information to relatives who also traded.

The order concluded that Mr Pawar had breached Regulations 3(1) and 4(1) of the insider trading regulations by communicating the information and by having the trades made at his behest. It rejected the argument that the two charges could not stand together. It noted that the illegal gain of Rs 8.32 crore made by Mr Bhojgadhiya and his family company had already been disgorged and that they had separately paid more than Rs 8 crore in settlement.

For that reason, and because Mr Pawar had already been barred from dealing for more than six months under the interim and confirmatory orders, the order imposed only a Rs 10 lakh penalty and revoked the earlier restrictions. The record does not show whether Mr Pawar appealed, how the six other noticees fared, or any criminal case, and the order describes none.

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. 2024-01-16 SEBI final 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.