Ketan Parekh: Inside SEBI's 30-Month Probe

The investigation claims to have untangled a mesh of people and entities involved in a front-running scam

- Neha Joshi & Varun Sood

At the turn of the century, Ketan Vinaychandra Parekh, then 38 years old, was known as the 'Pied Piper of Dalal Street'.

"If the stock market is one of the movers of the new Indian economy, Parekh is one of the prime movers of that market...legend has it IPOs are filed with Parekh before they hit the market," an India Today article from February 2001, stated.

Later, he was implicated for orchestrating the 2001 stock market scam that caused a market crash and banned from participating in the securities market for 14 years.

Last week, Parekh made the headlines yet again—he has been accused of facilitating manipulative trades using insider information. People involved in the alleged scam profited ₹38.7 crore. Additionally, a Singapore-based trader, who provided non-public information to Parekh, earned ₹27.07 crore in commission fees from two Indian financial firms, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), India's market regulator, said. Sebi is now seeking the return of this money, ₹65.77 crore in total, from 18 executives involved.

It is unclear what prompted Sebi to initiate this investigation. But probing Parekh, his network, and his trade was no easy task—it took 30 months.

Here's a detailed dive into how a mesh of phone numbers, chats, traders, and brokerages was slowly untangled.

Text from Bhabhi

Between 22 and 24 June 2023, Sebi conducted searches at 17 different locations—13 places in Kolkata and four in Mumbai.

It meticulously evaluated the bank accounts and mobile phone identification numbers, including the International Mobile Equipment Identity (a number for identifying a device) from seized phones.