SEBI v. Partha Sarathi Dhar and others (Zee Business guest-expert recommendations, 2025)

Judgment entered

✓ Checked against the primary document on October 9, 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 July 2025 a SEBI whole-time member debarred four traders for two years and fined them Rs 4 crore in total for trading ahead of stock recommendations that guest experts then broadcast on Zee Business. The case against one of the experts, Himanshu Gupta, was closed without direction.

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

40m 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

This final order of 28 July 2025 follows an interim order and show cause notice of 8 February 2024 against 15 noticees over trading linked to stock recommendations given by guest experts on the Zee Business channel. SEBI sorted them into profit makers, enablers who lent accounts and log-in details, and the five guest experts. The order itself concerns the remaining profit makers Partha Sarathi Dhar, SAAR Commodities, Manan Sharecom and Kanhya Trading Company, and the expert Himanshu Gupta, as others had earlier settled.

SEBI alleged that the guest experts passed non-public information about their coming recommendations to the profit makers, who bought or sold before the broadcasts and closed out afterwards for gain, a form of trading ahead of the public. The notice charged breaches of section 12A of the SEBI Act and the PFUTP Regulations.

The order finds the scheme established against the four profit makers and records their unlawful gains as Rs 53.85 lakh for Mr Dhar, Rs 4.38 crore for SAAR Commodities, Rs 1.35 crore for Manan Sharecom and Rs 1.10 crore for Kanhya Trading, about Rs 7.41 crore in all. It notes that this sum had already been disgorged through earlier settlement orders covering the signatories. For Mr Gupta it holds the material insufficient and ends the proceedings with no direction.

The directions debar the four for two years from the date of the interim order and impose penalties under section 15HA of Rs 50 lakh on Mr Dhar, Rs 2 crore on SAAR Commodities and Rs 75 lakh each on Manan Sharecom and Kanhya Trading, Rs 4 crore in total.

The record does not show whether any party appealed, and this order does not decide the position of the experts and enablers who settled.

This library tags the matter as front-running, because the allegation was trading ahead of broadcast recommendations. 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. 2025-07-28 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 page
• 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.