SEBI v. Pradeep Baijnath Pandya and others (CNBC Awaaz, 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 11 June 2024 a SEBI whole-time member found that a CNBC Awaaz anchor and a regular guest analyst, with the analyst's family entities, traded on stock recommendations before or as they were broadcast. The order barred eight noticees for five years, ordered disgorgement with interest and imposed Rs 2.6 crore in penalties.

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

26m 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 11 June 2024 was issued by a whole-time member of the Securities and Exchange Board of India. It names nine noticees: Pradeep Baijnath Pandya, an anchor of the Hindi business channel CNBC Awaaz; Alpesh Vasanji Furiya, a guest analyst who gave recommendations on the channel; six entities and family members linked to Mr Furiya; and Opu Funikant Nag, his employee.

SEBI noticed a high correlation between recommendations on Mr Pandya's show and the next-day and intraday trades of Mr Furiya and his connected entities between November 2019 and January 2021. It passed an ad-interim order in October 2021, then extended the investigation to October 2021 and issued a show cause notice. Mr Nag, who did not respond to the notice, was proceeded against without his reply.

The order concluded that the trading was based on advance knowledge of the recommendations, which it treated as confidential information misused for trading, drawing on the US misappropriation theory and on an Indian Supreme Court judgment on fairness. Mr Nag told SEBI that he traded on tips from Mr Furiya, who appeared on TV giving calls. The order also held that, even without that theory, the conduct breached a fairness standard under the fraud regulations. It observed that anchors on business channels are trusted disseminators of market information.

Eight noticees were restrained from the securities market for five years. Noticees 2 to 9 must disgorge the amounts set out in the order's tables with 12 percent simple interest. Penalties under section 15HA were Rs 1 crore each on Mr Pandya and Mr Furiya and Rs 10 lakh each on six entities, Rs 2.6 crore in all. No penalty is listed for Mr Nag.

The record does not show whether the order was appealed, how much was recovered, or whether CNBC Awaaz took any action. It describes no criminal case. The total disgorgement is not given as a single figure in the passages relied on here.

This library tags the matter as analyst manipulation and 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 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.

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

Timeline

1. 2024-06-11 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.