SEBI v. Aster Silicates Ltd. and others (IPO proceeds and prospectus, 2022)

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.

Report an error in this record (sebi-60518-misleading-issuer-disclosure-2022) by email

In June 2022 a SEBI adjudicating officer penalised the managing director and a director of Aster Silicates Ltd and eleven firms Rs 21 lakh in total over the use of its 2010 IPO money and misstatements in its prospectus. The company itself, now in liquidation, was not fined, and the lead manager was cleared.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

—

Disgorgement

—

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

—

Alleged gain

—

Penalty as published

2.1m 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

An adjudicating officer of SEBI issued this order on 30 June 2022 in the matter of Aster Silicates Ltd (now Shri Aster Silicates Ltd), a delisted company whose shares were earlier listed on BSE and NSE. The fifteen noticees were the company, its managing director Mahesh Maheshwari, whole-time director Namrata Maheshwari, eleven proprietary firms said to have acted as conduits, and the merchant banker to the issue. The show cause notices are dated 30 July 2020.

The company raised Rs 53.10 crore in an IPO in June 2010 at Rs 118 a share to expand manufacturing and fund working capital. SEBI alleged that proceeds were not used for the stated objects, that the prospectus omitted loans and wrongly said no supplier was related to the company, and that the eleven firms passed money on at the company's direction.

The order finds that Rs 35.44 crore of the IPO money was not applied for the stated objects and that Rs 16.26 crore could not be explained by documents, though about Rs 17.66 crore flowed back to the company and the order does not find money siphoned to the directors. It finds the prospectus misstated loans taken, with Rs 17 crore taken from one lender against Rs 8.83 crore disclosed, and failed to disclose that a vendor, Ambica Ceramics, belonged to the managing director's wife. It holds the fraud and unfair trade practices regulations were breached and the ICDR rules as to the two directors. The proceeding against the merchant banker failed because it had relied on audited figures, and no penalty was set for the company since a liquidator had taken charge.

The penalties were Rs 8,00,000 under section 15HA jointly and severally on the two directors, Rs 2,00,000 under section 15HB jointly and severally on them for the disclosure rules, and Rs 1,00,000 each on the eleven firms, a total of Rs 21,00,000, payable within 45 days.

The record does not show whether the penalties were paid or appealed, or whether investors recovered anything in the liquidation. The order does not mention a criminal case.

This library tags the matter as misleading issuer disclosure. 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

1. 2022-06-30 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.