SEBI v. Rajendra D. Shah and 35 others (NIFTY index options trades, 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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In August 2024 a SEBI adjudicating officer found that 29 related traders and one broker-dealer had entered synchronised, later squared-off NIFTY options trades with each other in 2014, with the broker booking losses of about Rs 89 crore and the others profits. Penalties on the 36 noticees, which also included six brokers, totalled Rs 1,56,20,000.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

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Alleged gain

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Penalty as published

15.6m 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

A SEBI adjudicating officer, Amar Navlani, issued this 330-page order on 30 August 2024. It deals with 36 noticees: a group of members, HUFs and companies linked to the Shah family and related persons (noticees 1 to 29), Nirshilp Securities Pvt Ltd (noticee 30), and six brokers (noticees 31 to 36). Twelve are named on this record. SEBI's investigation covered NIFTY index options contracts from January 2014 to January 2015.

SEBI alleged that noticees 1 to 29 entered trades in illiquid NIFTY options with Nirshilp, then squared them off with the same counterparty after a few trading days, so that Nirshilp booked the losses and each of the others booked profit, and that some of the Shah group also entered self-trades. It alleged these trades were non-genuine and created a misleading appearance of trading, in breach of section 12A of the SEBI Act and the fraud and unfair trade practice regulations. The six brokers were additionally alleged to have breached the stock broker code of conduct.

The order finds that Nirshilp was the common counterparty across all the impugned trades and booked total losses of Rs 89,04,16,148, with noticees 1 to 29 as counterparties booking profits. It rejected requests that the penalties be made joint and several, citing the repeated nature of the conduct and the prior penalties on some noticees.

Penalties were imposed under section 15HA on all 36 noticees, ranging from Rs 1,00,000 to Rs 21,00,000 (Nirshilp), and under section 15HB on the six brokers at Rs 1,00,000 each. The total of the amounts in the order's penalty table is Rs 1,56,20,000. The order records that gain to the noticees and loss to investors were not quantified in the material.

The record does not show whether the order was appealed, whether the penalties were paid, or the reason the group accepted these losses. It imposed money penalties only, no restraint from the market. No criminal case is mentioned.

This library tags the matter as matched orders and wash trading. 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.

• Matched orders — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.
• Wash trading — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2024-08-30 SEBI 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.