SEBI v. Manpasand Beverages Ltd and others (financial statement fraud, 2024)

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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On 30 April 2024 a SEBI whole-time member found that Manpasand Beverages Ltd and its senior managers overstated sales and purchases through dealings with sham firms in two financial years. The order barred four noticees from the market for three years and imposed penalties totalling Rs 74 lakh on eight noticees.

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

7.4m 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

The final order of 30 April 2024 was issued by a whole-time member of the Securities and Exchange Board of India. It names ten noticees: Manpasand Beverages Ltd, a fruit-drinks maker listed on BSE and NSE since 2015, its chairman and managing director Dhirendra Hansraj Singh, his son and whole-time director Abhishek Singh, its chief financial officer Paresh Thakkar, and six directors, including independent directors.

The order records that the matter began with an email in September 2019 from the audit committee chairman about suspected fraudulent transactions, after auditors had resigned, tax officials had searched the company and several of its managers had been arrested. The tax authority said the company had floated 38 paper firms to inflate turnover, with inward and outward dealings of Rs 188.48 crore and Rs 691.30 crore. SEBI commissioned a forensic audit of 2018-19 and 2019-20, which reported overstated purchases and sales and doubtful dealings with parties that filed no returns.

The order found that the company's financial statements were misrepresented and that the promoters and the chief financial officer were responsible, and that other directors failed in their duties of oversight. It found breaches of the 2003 fraud and unfair trade practice regulations and of the listing-disclosure rules, and a failure to provide information. Proceedings against two independent directors were disposed of without direction.

The company, Mr Singh, Abhishek Singh and Mr Thakkar were restrained from the market for three years, and the three individuals from director and key management roles for five years. Penalties were Rs 17 lakh each on the company, the two Singhs and Mr Thakkar, Rs 2 lakh each on Milind Babar and Chirag Doshi, and Rs 1 lakh each on Bharti Naik and Nishish Mobar, Rs 74 lakh in total. The company's directions are subject to insolvency-court orders.

The record does not show whether anyone appealed or paid, or any criminal outcome. The order refers to tax-authority custody of managers but makes no finding on criminal liability.

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. 2024-04-30 SEBI final 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.