A special court in Mumbai on Tuesday rejected an application filed by Ketan Parekh — former stock market operator behind the 2000-2001 securities scam — who had sought to travel to multiple countries over four months. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) had opposed his application, based on an interim order passed by the regulator in January, citing a “history of misusing” foreign travel permissions to engage in fraudulent trades through WhatsApp groups.
Parekh had submitted that in the past, he was granted permission to travel abroad by various courts. The Supreme Court allowed him to travel to the UK for his daughter’s medical treatment in 2021, as did the special court in 2022. In December 2023, he was also allowed to travel to the UK, Dubai, Singapore, EU and the US. The current plea sought permission to travel, in a phased manner, from October 4, 2025 to February 3, 2026. His lawyers submitted that permission was being taken altogether to avoid repeated pleas before the court.
Special judge Ravi M Jadhav rejected the plea. The detailed order is yet to be made available. Parekh is facing charges under the SEBI Act before the special court.
Parekh was debarred from the stock market for 14 years for his role in the 2000-2001 scam. In January, SEBI passed an interim ex-parte order, when it again debarred Parekh, along with two others, for alleged front-running. In opposing Parekh’s plea, the SEBI cited the order claiming that it had shown that Parekh was able to communicate time-sensitive non-public information available with Singapore-based Rohit Salgaocar within minutes to the frontrunners, to make illegal profits.
SEBI said that it suspected that the plea to travel was “not only with sinister motive to avoid the surveillance of respondent and to avoid Court proceedings, but also (to) try to settle in a foreign country, from where they can execute their sinister plans which will affect our country’s economy as well as innocent investors at large”.
SEBI’s special public prosecutor Anubha Rastogi had submitted that while earlier permissions were sought on compassionate grounds, the investigation has shown that during the same period he was actively engaged in orchestrating fraudulent trades. SEBI had submitted that it would be impossible to monitor his activities and communication abroad. SEBI also submitted before the court that the ex parte order has not been challenged by Parekh so far, and a blanket permission to travel for four months would make it difficult to trace his activities.
Parekh was named in over two dozen cases under the SEBI Act for stock exchange violations, including trading violations and non-payment of penalty. SEBI banned him from the market for 14 years in 2003. A special CBI court also convicted him and sentenced him to two years imprisonment in 2014. He is out on bail.
