SEBI v. Roshan Kumar Arun Mandal and Ajay Dhirajlal Nathwani (bulk SMS tips and circular trades, Mohit Industries, 2022)

Judgment entered

✓ 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; 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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A SEBI adjudicating officer fined two individuals Rs 20 lakh each in August 2022 over Mohit Industries shares, finding that one funded or tied himself to bulk SMS tips carrying a false claim about a new plant and that the other traded back and forth in the stock, mostly taking shares sold by the promoter group. Neither noticee replied or appeared.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

—

Alleged gain

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Penalty as published

4m 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

A SEBI adjudicating officer in Mumbai decided this matter on 25 August 2022. The noticees are Roshan Kumar Arun Mandal and Ajay Dhirajlal Nathwani, and the company is Mohit Industries Limited, a textile company listed on BSE and NSE.

SEBI began after investors complained about text messages urging them to buy the stock and promising a price rise. Bulk messages went out in two bursts, in November 2017 and January 2018, and some referred to a new plant in Ahmedabad, which the company told the exchange was untrue. Over the investigation period from November 2017 to January 2018 the price rose from about Rs 40 to above Rs 66 on NSE, volumes jumped several-fold, and the number of shareholders grew from about 2,000 to about 8,500 although the company's financials and announcements did not change.

SEBI alleged that the promoter group sold shares into this demand and that the two noticees, who had not traded the stock in four years, took most of those shares, with trades matched repeatedly among themselves and with the promoters. It also alleged that Mr Mandal had sent Rs 10 lakh to the firm behind the SMS sender about a month before the messages. Mr Mandal was charged with disseminating false advice under PFUTP Regulation 4(2)(k); Mr Nathwani with trades that created artificial volume under Regulation 4(2)(a).

Neither noticee answered the notice or attended, and the officer treated the allegations as unanswered. The order finds both in breach of section 12A of the SEBI Act and Regulations 3 and 4 of the PFUTP Regulations. For Mr Nathwani it notes that he bought and sold almost identical quantities on most days in the final trading burst and took the great majority of the promoters' sales. It imposes a penalty of Rs 20,00,000 on each noticee under section 15HA, Rs 40,00,000 in total.

The officer states that the material did not quantify any gain or investor loss. The record does not show who actually sent the messages, whether the promoters were proceeded against in this order, or whether there was an appeal.

This library tags the matter as false rumors and matched orders. 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 2 techniques 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.

• False rumours — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.
• Matched orders — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2022-08-25 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
• SEBI 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.