The Supreme Court set aside SEBI's insider-trading orders against PC Jeweller's managing director and his relatives, holding that Regulation 3 of the PIT Regulations creates no deeming fiction: the communication of unpublished price-sensitive information must be proved by cogent material — letters, emails, witnesses — not inferred from family proximity or the timing of trades. Estranged, financially-independent relatives are not 'connected persons' or 'immediate relatives'.
The Supreme Court held that front-running by a person who is not a registered intermediary is prohibited under the SEBI (PFUTP) Regulations 2003. 'Fraud' in Regulations 3 and 4 is read broadly to cover any act that induces another to deal in securities, even without deceit, and Regulation 4(2)(q) is not confined to intermediaries.
The Securities Appellate Tribunal set aside SEBI penalties against people who forwarded company financial figures on WhatsApp shortly before official announcements. Information becomes unpublished price sensitive information only when the person circulating it knew that it was both unpublished and price sensitive, and SEBI failed to prove that knowledge on a preponderance of probabilities.
By a 2:1 majority, SAT held that section 15J of the SEBI Act lets an adjudicator reduce a penalty below the statutory minimum in fit cases, over a dissent.
Valkya Editorial··8 min
TribunalSecurities and Exchange Board of India / Securities Appellate Tribunal
On 28 April 2026, SEBI passed a final order in the long-running Winsome Yarns GDR matter against Arun Panchariya, recomputing the penalty from approximately ₹67 crore to ₹20 lakh after the Securities Appellate Tribunal had repeatedly directed reassessment on proportionality grounds. The order is a worked example of how SAT's proportionality jurisprudence — the requirement that penalty quantum reflect comparable precedents, the role of mitigation evidence, and the limits on penalty when gains are not conclusively established — operates in the GDR-fraud space.
Notified on 7 January 2026, the SEBI (Stock Brokers) Regulations, 2026 replace the 1992 Regulations that had governed Indian broking for over three decades. The new framework consolidates registration, eligibility, conduct, governance, compliance, inspection, enforcement and grievance redressal into a single rulebook — with stronger client-asset protection, mandatory whistleblower architecture, and explicit permission for brokers to undertake other regulated financial activities. A digest of what changed, why it matters, and what practitioners should be tracking.