SEBI v. Omprakash A. Khandelwal (Aadhaar Ventures preferential allotment, 2025)
Dismissed
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. 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.
In August 2025 a SEBI adjudicating officer disposed of proceedings against Omprakash Khandelwal, managing director of Aadhaar Ventures India Limited, over a March 2013 preferential allotment alleged to have been made without payment. The officer gave him the benefit of doubt and found no fraud established, imposing no penalty.
The record
| Agency | SEBI (India) |
|---|---|
| Date filed | 2025-08-21 |
| Date resolved | 2025-08-21 |
| Court | SEBI adjudicating officer |
| Status | dismissed |
| Asset class | equities |
| Instruments | Aadhaar Ventures India Limited shares |
| Venue | BSE |
| Criminal parallel | No |
| Defendants | Omprakash A. Khandelwal |
| Techniques | Misleading issuer disclosure |
What was ordered
- Civil penalty
- —
- Disgorgement
- —
- Prejudgment interest
- —
- Total relief
- —
- Alleged gain
- —
What is alleged to have happened
This order of 21 August 2025 concerns Omprakash Khandelwal, the managing director of Aadhaar Ventures India Limited (AVIL), a BSE-listed company. It is a companion to the earlier order on another AVIL director, and arises from the same investigation into whether the company funded the 31 allottees of its preferential allotment of 11 March 2013, with the investigation period running from the shareholder meeting on 15 January 2013 to the allotment date.
SEBI alleged that the directors devised a fraudulent scheme of fund raising, giving an impression of capital infusion although the allotment money had not been received before shares were issued, in breach of the ICDR rule on payment before allotment, section 12A of the SEBI Act and regulations 3 and 4 of the PFUTP Regulations. A show cause notice of December 2022 sought a penalty under section 15HA of the SEBI Act and also under the Securities Contracts (Regulation) Act.
The officer found that Mr Khandelwal was not the chairman at the board meeting where the bank statement was said to have been tabled, and was not a signatory to the annual report or the bank accounts, while SEBI had already exonerated the director who was. The benefit of doubt went to him. The officer also found nothing on file showing price impact or trading volumes to support fraud: the price closed at Rs 0.98 on the first day of the period and Rs 0.79 on the last, and daily trades fell from 300 to 35. With no evidence of inducement to deal, the fraud charge failed.
The proceedings were disposed of without any monetary penalty.
The record does not show whether SEBI appealed, what happened to the other noticees, or whether investors lost money.
This library tags the matter as misleading issuer disclosure, because the allegation concerned a company's capital-raising announcements. 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.
- Misleading issuer disclosure — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.
Timeline
- 2025-08-21 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.
Related actions
Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.