SEBI v. Gaurav Dedhia and Kajal Savla (front running of institutional orders, 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 31 May 2024 a SEBI whole-time member found that the former chief dealer of IDBI Capital Markets & Securities Ltd front ran institutional clients' orders for about two and a half years using his sister's account. The order barred both for three years, ordered Rs 1.68 crore of disgorgement and imposed Rs 40 lakh in penalties.

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

4m 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 31 May 2024 was issued by a whole-time member of the Securities and Exchange Board of India. It names two noticees: Gaurav Dedhia, the former chief dealer of IDBI Capital Markets & Securities Ltd, and his sister Kajal Savla, in whose trading accounts the trades were placed. The same events led to a separate settlement with the broker in March 2024.

SEBI's surveillance raised front-running alerts in late 2020 and early 2021, and it investigated January 2019 to July 2022. The order describes the case as a chief dealer's trading ahead of large impending orders of institutional clients, based on his access to or knowledge of those orders. Most of the trades were placed from his workplace, through Ms Savla's accounts at other brokerages.

The order found that the noticees had front run the clients' orders and that the trading violated the fraud and unfair trade practice rules. It computed wrongful gains of Rs 1,67,52,329, noting that the full impounded amount had not been deposited into escrow and that the notice did not allege repetition or quantify investor loss.

Both noticees were restrained from the securities market for three years. They were ordered to disgorge the gains jointly and severally with 12 percent interest from 14 June 2022, using the escrow money already deposited. Mr Dedhia was penalised Rs 25 lakh and Ms Savla Rs 15 lakh under section 15HA, Rs 40 lakh in all.

The record does not show whether the order was appealed or the sums recovered, and 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. 2024-05-31 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.