The Bombay high court stayed for four weeks a special court's order to the Anti-Corruption Bureau asking it to register an FIR against the former SEBI chair, Madhabi Puri Buch, and five other officials for alleged stock market fraud and regulatory violations.
Justice Shivkumar Dige, while allowing the stay, said the special court's March 1 order was passed mechanically without going into the details and without attributing any specific role to the accused.
The high court's decision was on petitions filed by Buch, three current whole-time SEBI directors and two BSE officials.
The petitioners had sought quashing of the order passed by the special court directing the Anti-Corruption Bureau to register an FIR against them pertaining to certain allegations of fraud committed in 1994 while listing a company on the BSE.
The case stems from a complaint by media reporter Sapan Shrivastava, who alleged large-scale financial fraud and regulatory violations during the 1994 listing of a company on the BSE.
He claimed that SEBI officials facilitated market manipulation by allowing the listing without compliance under the SEBI Act, 1992. SEBI responded to the developments, saying that it would challenge the order through legal means.
The market regulator highlighted that the allegations pertain to events that occurred long before the accused held their current positions. The BSE also dismissed the complaint as "frivolous and vexatious."
Buch, India’s first woman SEBI chief who completed her three-year term last week, has denied the accusations, saying that her investments predated her SEBI appointment.
