SEBI bars Bollywood actor Arshad Warsi, wife, others from stock market. Details here

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.

This was done by releasing misleading promotional videos across several YouTube channels, including Moneywise, The Advisor, and Profit Yatra—all operated by Manish Mishra, who played a central role in the scheme.

These videos presented SBL as a promising investment opportunity and were timed to coincide with and amplify artificial market activity, SEBI said.

The claims pertained to the company signing a deal with Adani group, or entering into a ₹1100 crore contract with a big American corporation, to mutual fund buying in the stock. SEBI said in its order that the contents of the video were false and misleading and were uploaded to manipulate the share prices of SBL.

In a matter of nine months from March 2022 to December 2022, the promoter shareholding declined by 15% from 40.95% to 25.58%. During the same period, the number of public shareholders increased from a mere 885 to 72,509. The public shareholding, resultantly, went up from 59.05% as of March 2022 to 74.52% as of March 2023.

Arshad Warsi's role in SBL scam

On July 13, 2022, Bollywood actor Arshad Warsi purchased 1.87 lakh shares of Sadhna Broadcast from Jatin Shah, a known associate in the manipulation network. On the same day, his wife Maria Goretti Warsi acquired 2.65 lakh shares.

While Warsi later claimed that he acted on a friend’s investment tip and was unaware of any wrongdoing, SEBI rejected that defence as it shared WhatsApp chats showing his involvement in the “pump and dump” scheme.

SEBI action on Arshad Warsi & others

Sebi noted that Arshad had made a profit of ₹41.70 lakh, and his wife earned a profit of ₹50.35 lakh. Both have been barred from accessing the securities market for a period of a year.

Sebi, additionally, has directed 59 entities to disgorge total unlawful gains worth ₹58.01 crore along with 12% interest per annum jointly and severally from the end of the investigation period till the date of actual payment.

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