Sebi on Wednesday slapped penalties totalling Rs 11.90 crore on 19 entities and also barred them from the securities market for up to five years for indulging in a pump and dump scheme of shares in the matter of Superior Finlease Ltd. The regulator imposed fines in the range of Rs 10 lakh to Rs 5 crore on 19 entities, including Rajneesh Kumar, Ashish P Shah and Kirtidan K Gadhavi. Further, Sebi also barred 17 entities, including Kumar, Shah, and Gadhavi from the securities markets for five years. In addition, the markets watchdog barred Jalaj Agrawal and Arvind Shukla from the securities markets for three years. In its 54-page final order, Sebi said, "The noticees have orchestrated a wellplanned 'pump and dump' operation in the scrip of SFL. "The mastermind behind this whole operation was Noticee 1 (Rajneesh Kumar), who was not just a shareholder director of SFL, but also happened to be a director of a Sebi-registered intermediary, Indian Finance Guaranty Ltd (IFGL)." "Rajneesh Ku
