SEBI v. Aakash Doshi and others (Telegram-promoted price manipulation, Darshan Orna, 2025)

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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A SEBI adjudicating officer found that eleven connected people combined trades that pushed up Darshan Orna's price with stock tips on a Telegram channel, while seven of them made about Rs 2.51 crore by selling out. The order imposed penalties between Rs 10 lakh and Rs 1.2 crore, Rs 3.87 crore in total.

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

38.7m 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

On 30 July 2025 a SEBI adjudicating officer issued an order on eleven noticees in the matter of price manipulation in the shares of Darshan Orna Limited using social media channels. They include Aakash Doshi, his parents and relatives, Kevin Kapadia and his wife, and others. SEBI began from recommendations circulated on a Telegram channel and investigated 1 September 2021 to 30 June 2022. It had issued an interim order in June 2023 against two of the noticees.

SEBI alleged a three-tier scheme. Family members and associates placed first trades, many for 100 shares or fewer, to set higher last-traded and new-high prices. People who linked the traders to the Telegram platform and others who posted the recommendations then promoted the stock to the public, and the traders sold into the demand. One noticee was said to have funded some of the buying. The charges were section 12A(a), (b) and (c) of the SEBI Act and Regulations 3 and 4 of the PFUTP Regulations.

The officer held the allegations established against all eleven, with different parts of Regulation 4(2) engaged depending on role. He found that the group raised the last traded price by Rs 1,804.30 in total and the new-high price by Rs 30.75, placed 63 first trades, and sent two Telegram messages, on 24 February and 4 March 2022, promising large returns and price targets. Over January to March 2022 the number of public shareholders rose from 1,732 to 7,536, volume jumped and the price rose from Rs 77 to Rs 146.7. He found that seven noticees together made about Rs 2,51,08,009 while exiting.

Under section 15HA the order imposed penalties of Rs 1.2 crore on Dilip Doshi, Rs 90 lakh on Aakash Doshi, Rs 50 lakh on Kruti Kevin Kapadia, Rs 45 lakh on Richi Dilip Doshi, Rs 20 lakh on Dhanpal Gandhi, Rs 12 lakh on Darshan Gandhi and Rs 10 lakh each on the other five, Rs 3.87 crore in total. It imposed no market ban or disgorgement. The officer noted that one noticee had repeated violations.

The record does not show investor losses, whether anyone appealed, or whether the penalties were paid. The order is a civil penalty, not a criminal conviction.

This library tags the matter as chat-group pump (Telegram) and price manipulation. 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.

• Chat group pumps — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.
• Price manipulation — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2025-07-30 SEBI 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.

Same matter

The library links these 2 records because they appear to concern one matter: the same lead defendant, an overlapping technique tag and close filing dates, or a shared court docket or a release that cites the other. Records are listed by date filed.

This grouping is the library's, made by matching names, techniques, dates and citations when the site is built. It is not the regulator's or a court's determination that the records are one case, and it errs towards missing a link rather than making a false one.

Related actions

Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.

Record added October 8, 2026. submit a correction.