SEBI v. Ajay Bhatia (insider trading, Adani group shares, 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 the head of an IHC subsidiary who was alleged to have received advance word of IHC's investment in Adani Green and to have traded on it and passed it to another man. He paid Rs 1.05 crore plus disgorgement and interest and accepted a six-month market ban, neither admitting nor 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

10.5m 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 16 September 2025 two SEBI whole-time members issued a settlement order for Ajay Bhatia, managing director and chief executive of QuantLase Lab LLC, a subsidiary of International Holding Company (IHC). He applied on his own initiative to settle proceedings that SEBI might have brought over trading and communication of unpublished price sensitive information.

SEBI's account was that on 8 April 2022 Adani Green Energy announced a preferential issue of about 2 crore shares to an IHC vehicle at Rs 1,923.25 per share, followed by a press release about a USD 2 billion investment, and that Adani Green rose 7.2 per cent that day. It treated the proposed issue as price sensitive information that also touched Adani Enterprises and Adani Transmission. It alleged that Mr Bhatia, as a connected person, received the information in emails of 2 and 4 April 2022, passed it to Supreet Singh Luthra, and himself bought shares and Adani Enterprises futures between 4 and 8 April 2022 worth about Rs 8.69 crore.

SEBI computed his gain at Rs 55,34,457, part realised and part notional. The alleged violations were section 12A(d) and (e) of the SEBI Act and Regulations 3(1) and 4(1) of the PIT Regulations.

Under the revised terms, which the order records as approved on 23 June 2025, Mr Bhatia paid a settlement amount of Rs 1,04,87,903, disgorgement of Rs 55,34,457 and simple interest of Rs 9,58,902, and undertook a six-month restraint from the securities market. SEBI agreed to take no enforcement action over those violations, with the usual right to reopen if representations proved untrue or undertakings were breached.

The record does not show an adjudicated finding about what Mr Bhatia knew or did, since the matter ended in settlement. It does not show any role of the Adani companies, any appeal, or any criminal proceeding.

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. 2025-09-16 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.