SEBI v. R. Senthil Kumar and others (Trustline front running, 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 25 January 2024 a SEBI whole-time member found that two employees of Trustline Holdings and their relatives had front run the firm's portfolio management and fund trades, making about Rs 57.66 lakh. The order imposed market bans, disgorgement with interest and penalties of Rs 30 lakh in total.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

—

Alleged gain

—

Penalty as published

3m 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 final order of 25 January 2024 was issued by a whole-time member of the Securities and Exchange Board of India. The four noticees are R. Senthil Kumar and Prakash V., who worked at Trustline Holdings Pvt. Ltd., and two relatives whose accounts were used: Geetha N., Mr Kumar's wife, and Geetha V., Mr Prakash's mother. The trades front run belonged to Trustline's portfolio management service and its Deep Alpha alternative investment fund.

SEBI's alert system flagged the trading, and an investigation covering May 2017 to June 2022 followed. SEBI alleged that Mr Kumar, who worked in operations and dealing, used non-public information about Trustline's planned trades to trade in his wife's account, and passed the information to Mr Prakash, who traded in his own account and his mother's. An interim order and notice of December 2022 restrained the four and required about Rs 57.66 lakh of alleged gains to be placed in escrow.

After a hearing and cross-examination, the order found that the noticees had front run Trustline and had violated section 12A of the SEBI Act and the 2003 fraud and unfair trade practice regulations. It found unlawful gains of Rs 57,66,221. It noted that the material did not show the losses suffered by investors or any repetition.

The order restrained all four from the securities market until three years after each pays the disgorgement they are liable for, and from association with listed companies or registered intermediaries for three years. It required disgorgement of the gains with 12 percent simple interest, applying the escrowed money to the amount owed by Mr Kumar and his wife. It imposed penalties of Rs 10 lakh each on Mr Kumar and Mr Prakash and Rs 5 lakh each on the two relatives, Rs 30 lakh in all.

The record does not show whether the order was appealed or whether the unpaid disgorgement, about Rs 47.1 lakh of which was still outstanding after the escrow credit, was recovered. It describes no criminal case.

This library tags the matter as front running. 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.

• Front running — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2024-01-25 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
• 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.