The Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT) on Monday dismissed Ketan Parekh's appeal challenging the Securities and Exchange Board of India's (Sebi) refusal to allow him to cross-examine two traders of Capital Group in an alleged front-running case, as reported by both Business Standard and Moneycontrol.
The dispute over cross-examination has been ongoing for several months. Sebi had allowed Parekh to cross-examine Singapore-based trader Rohit Salgaocar, because Salgaocar had acknowledged communicating with Parekh, according to Moneycontrol. However, the regulator rejected Parekh's request to question the two Capital Group traders, saying they had stated that they did not know Parekh or had never met him, and that they were not named in Sebi's January 2025 order.
SAT Presiding Officer Justice PS Dinesh Kumar, in an oral order, said the request to cross-examine the traders after the matter had been reserved for orders could not be accepted. "In our view, the position of law is clear in that once the matter is reserved, the only right that remains for the appellant is to challenge the final order," he stated, as quoted by both outlets. The tribunal added that the appellant's request was "misconceived" and the appeal failed, according to Business Standard.
SAT further said that if Parekh believes Sebi relied on any material that was not put to him during the proceedings, he can raise that issue while challenging the final order, as reported by Moneycontrol.
The case stems from a Sebi interim order in January 2025 that barred Parekh and Salgaocar from the securities market for alleged front-running of trades of a US-based foreign portfolio investor managing around $2.5 trillion in assets. The regulator also directed disgorgement of ₹65.77 crore of illegal gains, an amount that Moneycontrol reported as approximately ₹66 crore. The interim order remains in force, and a final order is awaited.
Sebi alleged that Salgaocar had access to advance information about the large fund's trades and communicated it to Parekh, who used associates in Kolkata to build positions, as reported by both Business Standard and Moneycontrol. Parekh had earlier been barred from the securities market for 14 years over his role in the 2000 stock market scam, the outlets noted.
In a related development, Moneycontrol reported that in November 2025, SAT allowed Salgaocar to cross-examine Parekh and directed Sebi to facilitate the process. That claim was carried by a single outlet and not independently confirmed by the other reporting.