SEBI v. Praveen Rastogi and others (Continental Seeds and Chemicals scheme, 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. 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 November 2024 SEBI found that the managing director of Continental Seeds and Chemicals and a network of connected people had traded the company's shares among themselves so that the price rose about 664 per cent. The order directed disgorgement of Rs 2,24,17,400 with interest, imposed restraints of 3 months to 2 years and penalties totalling Rs 2,18,00,000.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

—

Alleged gain

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Penalty as published

21.8m 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

SEBI chief general manager Dr Anitha Anoop issued the order on 29 November 2024. It names 18 noticees, among them the managing director Praveen Rastogi, Sachin Rastogi, the companies Praveen Aroma Pvt. Ltd. and Continental Seeds and Chemicals Ltd, several proprietorships and individuals who traded or lent accounts. Twelve are named on this record. The company's shares were listed on the NSE SME platform, and SEBI examined trading from 5 December 2019 to 5 February 2020.

The order records that the closing price rose from Rs 12.90 to Rs 98.60 in that period, a rise of 664.34 per cent. SEBI alleged that Praveen Rastogi orchestrated a scheme in which funds from his two companies, routed through five connected proprietorships, financed the purchase of shares by several net sellers and other traders, and that accounts of eight front entities opened by Vijay Pujara were used to trade, creating volume and lifting the price so that shares could be sold at inflated prices to unsuspecting investors.

The order finds the fraud and unfair trade practice violations established against the seventeen noticees penalised, accepting SEBI's gain calculations because several noticees did not reply on them. It describes Praveen Rastogi and Sachin Rastogi as having orchestrated the scheme through their positions as directors and signatories on the companies' accounts, and Pradeep Narendra Bhatt and Vijay Pujara as instrumental in moving the price. Several noticees also breached section 11C by ignoring summonses.

SEBI directed noticees 1 to 17 jointly and severally to disgorge Rs 2,24,17,400 with simple interest at 12 per cent a year from 5 February 2020. It restrained the two Rastogis and Vijay Pujara for 2 years, Pradeep Bhatt for 18 months, Natvarbhai Vegda for 3 months and the others for 1 year, and barred the two Rastogis from director or key managerial roles for 2 years. Penalties from Rs 5,00,000 to Rs 25,00,000 under sections 15HA, 15A(a) and 15A(b) came to Rs 2,18,00,000 in total.

The record does not show whether the order was appealed, whether the money was paid, or the exact losses to investors, which the order says it could not determine. No criminal case is mentioned.

This library tags the matter as matched orders and price manipulation. 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.
• Price manipulation — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2024-11-29 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.