In recent weeks, SEBI Chairman Tuhin Kanta Pandey has made emphatic statements about cracking down on “pump-and-dump” operations in the market. He spoke of a new era of “predictive supervision” through data analytics, promising that market manipulation will soon be spotted before it happens.

It sounded reassuring. But SEBI’s actual handling of such cases tells a different story—one that exposes the gap between rhetoric and reality.

The case that tells a different story: In mid-2023, SEBI issued an interim order-cum-show cause notice in connection with penny stocks that had witnessed sharp price manipulation around 2018-19. The order found evidence of a coordinated pump-and-dump scheme—where operators artificially drove up stock prices through circular trading and misleading information,

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