SEBI v. Bharat Bhushan and others (Best Agrolife Ltd, 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 3 April 2024 a SEBI adjudicating officer penalised 15 of 16 noticees a combined Rs 1.03 crore in the matter of Best Agrolife Ltd. One noticee was found to have pushed the price up with small buy orders, and the rest to have traded among themselves in circular and synchronised trades and to have ignored SEBI 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

10.3m 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

This adjudication order of 3 April 2024 names 16 noticees in the matter of Best Agrolife Limited, led by Bharat Bhushan, and including PRB Securities Pvt. Ltd. and a group of individuals headed in the numbering by Ramkumar Bholanath Yadav. SEBI examined the period April 2018 to March 2022, in which the share price moved from Rs 2.50 to Rs 1,399.70 on 4 November 2021.

SEBI began from several complaints that were passed to BSE and NSE for analysis, then investigated. It alleged that Mr Bhushan manipulated the price by placing small buy orders above the last traded price, and that the connected group of noticees traded exclusively with each other without any change in beneficial ownership, in circular and synchronised trades, creating artificial volume that was a significant part of the stock's total market volume. It further alleged that most of the group ignored summonses to appear and give information.

The adjudicating officer found these charges established, citing the 2003 fraud and unfair trade practice regulations read with section 12A of the SEBI Act for the trading, and the investigative-powers provisions of the SEBI Act for the non-cooperation. Mr Bhushan was found to have raised the price and created a misleading appearance of trading; the group was found to have created artificial volume. The order treats the summons failures as having hampered the investigation. It also records earlier SEBI actions against some noticees, such as warnings and a Rs 5 lakh penalty in other matters. PRB Securities is not among those penalised in this order, and the record does not say why.

Fifteen noticees were penalised individually. Mr Bhushan was fined Rs 5 lakh. Others were fined between Rs 6 lakh and Rs 9 lakh each, combining the penalty for the trading violation with that for ignoring summonses. The penalties add up to Rs 1.03 crore, and the order gave 45 days to pay.

The record does not show whether any noticee appealed or paid, nor the profit made. It describes no criminal case.

This library tags the matter as wash trading 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.

• Wash trading — 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. 2024-04-03 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
• 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.