Bollywood actor Arshad Warsi, his wife Maria Goretti and 57 others have been barred by the stock market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) from accessing the Indian equity market for a period of up to five years in a stock manipulation case.
The case pertains to Sadhna Broadcast Ltd (SBL) — a little-known company whose shares were artificially inflated and offloaded onto unsuspecting retail investors through a coordinated stock manipulation scheme.
Sadhna Broadcast: How did the scam unfold?
The case pertaining to Sadhna Broadcast, whose name was changed on May 23, 2025, to Crystal Business System, is a textbook example of a “pump-and-dump” scam.
As part of the scam, the promoters of the company executed trades among themselves in a highly coordinated manner, thus driving the stock price higher.
SEBI said that while these trades — often small in volume — had a disproportionate impact on price due to low liquidity, allowing the perpetrators to push the scrip upward with relatively minimal trading outlay.
In the second part of their plan, they turned to promoting the stock through YouTube channels, attracting retail investors to whom the shares could be sold at inflated prices.
