SEBI v. Bhavin Pankaj Doshi and others (Maxgrow Fintrade front running, 2024)

Settled

✓ 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 26 April 2024 a SEBI chief general manager approved a settlement with four applicants accused of front running the trades of Aditya Birla Mutual Fund in 2021. They paid Rs 2.90 crore in settlement amounts, Rs 85.1 lakh in disgorgement, and agreed to six-month voluntary debarments, without admitting or denying the allegations.

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

—

Penalty as published

29m 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 settlement order of 26 April 2024 closes show cause proceedings against four applicants: Bhavin Pankaj Doshi, his company Maxgrow Fintrade Pvt Ltd, Nitesh Kumar Jain and Atish Shah. It followed a SEBI alert about suspected front running of the trades of a large client, Aditya Birla Mutual Fund, between February and December 2021.

The show cause notice of April 2023 alleged that the trades of Mr Doshi and Maxgrow were not ordinary trading but were placed ahead of the fund's orders. It alleged that Mr Jain acted as the tipper of the information and Mr Shah as a carrier of it, and that all four breached section 12A of the SEBI Act and the 2003 fraud and unfair trade practice regulations. The evidence cited included order and trade logs, call records and statements recorded on oath.

All four applied to settle in May 2023, without admitting or denying the findings. After two rounds of revised terms, the approving panel accepted settlement amounts of Rs 62.40 lakh from Mr Doshi, Rs 96,08,486 from Maxgrow, Rs 68.90 lakh from Mr Jain and Rs 62.40 lakh from Mr Shah. They also agreed to pay jointly and severally Rs 85,11,774 as disgorgement of the alleged gain, including 12 percent simple interest, and each agreed to a voluntary six-month debarment from the securities market.

The four settlement amounts sum to Rs 2,89,78,486. SEBI confirmed receipt of all payments in April 2024, and the order ends the proceedings and bars further action for the same violation, reserving the right to reopen if a representation was untrue or an undertaking breached.

The record does not show the trading profits other than the disgorgement figure, the number of trades, or the mutual fund's loss, and it makes no finding of fact because settlement was without admission. 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. 2024-04-26 SEBI settlement 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.