SEBI v. Niraj Dhanraj Chhajer and Deepti Chhajer (insider trading, Torrent Power, 2026)

Judgment entered

✓ 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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In January 2026 a SEBI adjudicating officer found that an investor traded in Torrent Power shares in his own and his wife's accounts just before results, after a school friend in the company's finance team shared figures. The couple were penalised Rs 50 lakh jointly and severally.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

—

Alleged gain

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Penalty as published

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

The adjudicating officer, Jai Sebastian, issued this order on 16 January 2026. The noticees are Niraj Dhanraj Chhajer and his wife Deepti Chhajer. The original proceedings also named a Torrent Power finance manager, Rishi Sudhirbhai Shah, but the order's operative part concerns only the couple.

Torrent Power published results for the quarter ended December 2022 on 14 February 2023; profit rose by about 41 percent over the previous quarter and the share price closed 10.37 percent higher the next day. SEBI treated the results as unpublished price sensitive information from 17 January 2023, when preparation began. It alleged that Mr Chhajer learned of them from Mr Shah, a friend since school and a general manager in corporate finance, through calls and information passed around the finance team, and traded in his own and his wife's accounts on 13 and 14 February 2023.

The order finds that the couple traded while in possession of the information and violated section 12A(d) and (e) of the SEBI Act and regulation 4(1) of the Insider Trading Regulations. It treats the husband as having placed the orders in his wife's account, hence joint liability.

In setting the penalty under section 15G, the officer counted the profit of Rs 14.20 lakh made by the couple, found no loss to investors on record and no repetition. The penalty is Rs 50,00,000, payable jointly and severally within 45 days, failing which SEBI may begin recovery.

The record does not show whether the couple appealed, whether the penalty was paid, or how the source of the information was dealt with in any separate order. It describes no criminal case or disgorgement direction.

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. 2026-01-16 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.