SEBI v. Nehal Milan Mehta and Ashish Anup Nigam (insider trading, BF Investment, 2025)

Settled

✓ 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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SEBI settled insider-trading proceedings against an investment banker at the manager to a delisting offer and a trader accused of buying ahead of the announcement. The two paid Rs 57.2 lakh and Rs 55.9 lakh, the trader also paid disgorgement, and both accepted six-month market bans without admitting or denying the allegations.

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

11.3m 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

On 11 April 2025 a SEBI chief general manager issued a settlement order for Nehal Milan Mehta and Ashish Anup Nigam in the matter of trading in shares of BF Investment Limited. SEBI had examined trading between 4 September 2022 and 20 March 2023.

SEBI alleged that the unpublished price sensitive information was the company's 30 December 2022 announcement that its promoter group intended to buy out public shareholders and voluntarily delist the shares; it treated the period from 4 to 30 December 2022 as the period of that information. Mr Nigam, an executive director of Axis Capital, the manager to the offer, was alleged to hold the information and to have communicated it to Mr Mehta. SEBI pointed to frequent calls between them, including a call on 29 December 2022 followed by buy orders, and to Mr Mehta's concentrated trading in this one stock. It said he sold after the price moved from Rs 292.1 to Rs 458.35 and made an unlawful gain of Rs 30.47 lakh.

The notice of 11 September 2024 alleged violations of Regulation 4(1) of the PIT Regulations and section 12A(d) and (e) of the SEBI Act by Mr Mehta, and of Regulation 3(1) and section 12A(e) by Mr Nigam. Both applied to settle without admitting or denying the allegations.

The order records settlement amounts of Rs 57,20,000 from Mr Mehta and Rs 55,90,000 from Mr Nigam, Rs 1,13,10,000 combined. Mr Mehta also paid disgorgement of Rs 30,47,000 plus interest of about Rs 6.81 lakh. Each gave a voluntary undertaking to stay out of the securities market for six months. SEBI agreed to take no further action over the alleged violations, subject to the usual reservations if representations proved untrue or undertakings were breached.

The record does not show an adjudicated finding that either man misused the information, because the case ended in settlement. It does not show any appeal or criminal case.

This library tags the matter as insider 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 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.

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

Timeline

1. 2025-04-11 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.