SEBI v. Anil Arora and others (alleged leak of results to adviser, Mawana Sugars, 2025)

Dismissed

✓ 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.

Report an error in this record (sebi-98421-insider-trading-2025) by email

In December 2025 a SEBI adjudicating officer gave the benefit of doubt to two former chief financial officers and the company secretary of Mawana Sugars, who had been accused of letting a special adviser see quarterly estimates before he sold shares. The proceedings were disposed of without any penalty.

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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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.

What is alleged to have happened

The adjudicating officer, Sudeep Mishra, issued this order on 17 December 2025 after a transfer of the case from the officer first appointed in 2023. The noticees are Anil Arora, an earlier chief financial officer of Mawana Sugars Limited, his successor Bharat Bhushan Mehta, and Ashok Kumar Shukla, the company secretary and compliance officer.

SEBI examined trading from September 2017 to February 2018 and alleged that the two chief financial officers sent advance quarterly estimates to a former chairman and managing director who had become a special adviser, Siddharth Shriram, and that this was not for a legitimate purpose. It said he then sold shares while in possession of results for the quarter ended September 2017. It also alleged that the company secretary failed to run the company's fair-disclosure code so as to keep the adviser from such information. The provisions cited were section 12A(e) of the SEBI Act and regulations 3(1) and 9(3) of the Insider Trading Regulations.

The noticees argued among other things that the results had already been published when the trades took place, that the figures were estimates that differed from actual results, that they did not trade or gain, and that the company secretary was not copied on the emails. Mr Shriram is described in the order as deceased.

The officer held that none of the three allegations was established, extended the benefit of doubt to all three noticees, did not rule on their other arguments, and disposed of the proceedings without a monetary penalty. The order adds that its view rests on the specific facts and does not decide other cases about sharing information for a legitimate purpose.

The record does not show whether SEBI appealed, and it describes no criminal case. Nothing here is a finding that any noticee leaked information.

This library tags the matter as insider trading (alleged communication of unpublished price sensitive information, not established). 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. 2025-12-17 SEBI adjudication 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

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.