SEBI v. Hanif Kasambhai Shekh and Robert Resources Ltd (Telegram channel Safebulls, 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 30 April 2024 a SEBI chief general manager found that the administrator of the Telegram channel Safebulls, and a company he signed for, traded in stocks they were recommending to about 60,000 subscribers. The order barred both for one year, ordered disgorgement of the gains with interest and fined them Rs 5 lakh jointly.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

—

Alleged gain

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Penalty as published

500k 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 order of 30 April 2024 was issued by a chief general manager of the Securities and Exchange Board of India against two noticees: Hanif Kasambhai Shekh and Robert Resources Ltd, a company listed on the Metropolitan Stock Exchange of India. Mr Shekh was its authorised signatory. The matter began with a complaint of September 2021 that the administrators of a Telegram channel called Safebulls were pumping junk stocks and dumping them on retail investors.

SEBI's investigation covered January 2021 to March 2022. The channel had about 60,879 subscribers in February 2022, and gave cash and derivative recommendations concentrated in small-cap shares whose prices were easy to move. SEBI alleged that Mr Shekh was the channel's administrator, a point it said was confirmed from seized devices, and that the company's trading account was used to take profits from the price and volume effect of his buy recommendations.

The noticees argued that the channel was transparent, that some recommendations were for longer holds, and that no wrongful gain had been made. The order rejected this. It found no relevant corporate news around the recommendation times, concluded that the recommendation-and-trade pattern was the core of a fraudulent scheme, and noted that the channel posted claims of quick profits as inducement to subscribers.

The order restrained both noticees from the securities market for one year and ordered them to disgorge jointly and severally the unlawful gains with 12 percent simple interest from 18 February 2022. The show cause notice had proposed disgorgement of Rs 28,80,825. The order lists a joint penalty of Rs 5 lakh under section 15HA, noting earlier orders against Mr Shekh, including a five-year market restraint in December 2022.

The directions order disgorgement of the total unlawful gains without restating a figure, so this record cannot confirm that Rs 28,80,825 was the amount fixed. It does not show whether anyone appealed or paid, and it describes no criminal case.

This library tags the matter as social media ramps and pump and dump. 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.

• Social media ramps — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.
• Pump and dump — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2024-04-30 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.