The Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT) has stayed the markets regulator’s disgorgement and debarment order against Bollywood actor Arshad Warsi in the Sadhna Broadcast Ltd (SBL) stock manipulation case, pending the outcome of his appeal.
The tribunal clarified that Warsi and the co-appellants, including his wife Maria Goretti and brother Iqbal Warsi, need to deposit a total of ₹60 lakh in an escrow account, pending the final outcome, said the 31 July verdict.
The SAT bench, led by presiding officer Justice P.S. Dinesh Kumar, noted that ₹40,66,760 had already been deposited in compliance with its March 2023 interim order. So, Warsi must deposit ₹19,33,240 more to meet the tribunal’s condition.
The case will next be heard on 15 September 2025, together with a related appeal.
Pump-and-dump case
Warsi, Goretti, and Iqbal Warsi were named among 64 parties in the Securities and Exchange Board of India’s (Sebi) 29 May order. The regulator imposed a ₹5 lakh penalty on the Bollywood actor and barred him from trading in the securities market for one year.
The order followed Sebi’s March 2023 interim directive, barring him and his wife from the market. However, on appeal, the SAT partially set aside the ban that same month.
The tribunal restricted the trading ban to the SBL scrip during the investigation and directed the Warsis to deposit 50% of their alleged unlawful gains of over ₹60 lakh in an escrow account. For the remaining amount, they were required to provide an undertaking to deposit it within 30 days of the final order.
Sebi’s show cause notice categorized Warsi as a “connected entity” to YouTube content creators Manish Mishra and Ahuti Mistry. However, the evidence the regulator primarily relied upon, a screenshot of WhatsApp chats between Warsi and Ahuti Mistry, was called into question.
Mishra, a financial influencer, and Mistry are both co-accused in the Sebi case.
Warsi’s counsel, Akshay Petkar, argued that the chats, at best, established a professional or contractual relationship between the parties and did not prove that Warsi facilitated market manipulation or actively aided Mishra in a pump-and-dump operation.
Notably, the referenced chats with Mishra involved an entirely different scrip, VCU Data Management Co. Ltd, not SBL, which is at the heart of this proceeding.
He also argued the actor had only a professional engagement with Laddu Gopal Ventures and Mishra for the film project Jeevan Bima Yojana, and never received ₹25 lakh from Mishra, contrary to what’s inferred from the chats.
Furthermore, Petkar claimed that the profits earned by the appellants from the SBL trading were fully reinvested and have remained invested to date.
Petkar also criticized Sebi’s latest order, asserting that it failed to address prior SAT directions or the appellants’ written submissions, and simply concluded, “on surmises and conjectures”, that Warsi played a facilitative role in market manipulation.
Sebi stated in its 29 May order, the SBL scheme allegedly operated from March to November 2022 and was based on a digital promotional blitz via YouTube channels—The Advisor, Moneywise, and Profit Yatra—allegedly orchestrated by Mishra.
These channels misrepresented SBL’s prospects, fueling investor frenzy and enabling insiders to offload shares worth over ₹33 crore as the stock’s public shareholding jumped from under 1,000 to over 70,000 in months.
On 13 July 2022, Sebi alleged that Warsi and his wife bought substantial SBL shares and liquidated them the next day for profits exceeding ₹1.7 crore jointly. While Warsi denies wrongdoing, claiming he traded on a friend’s tip and was unaware of any fraud, Sebi has maintained that trading patterns and chat evidence suggest deeper involvement.
