Mumbai: An RTI activist who runs a web portal to “expose white-collar corruption” and is not new to courtrooms, Sapan Shrivastava, whose PILs have been landing on the bench of many judges for over a decade, got a big break Saturday.
Hearing one of his appeals on 1 March, a special Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) court ordered an FIR against the ex-chairperson of the Securities and Exchange Board of India, Madhabi Puri Buch. Shrivastava’s moment in the sun, however, was short-lived.
The Bombay High Court stayed the order on Tuesday, calling it “mechanical and unjust, harsh and biased against Buch”. The court also criticised Shrivastava, calling him “a habitual complainant”.
The charges against Madhabi Puri Buch pertain to the alleged fraudulent listing of the company, Cals Refineries Ltd, on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), with the active connivance of the regulatory authorities, particularly the SEBI.
As a part of a Right to Information exercise, Shrivastava had been going through the details of various companies when he decided to look at Cals Refineries, where he had lost money. The finding that Cals Refineries had not complied with the 1992 SEBI Act and did not obtain a no-objection certificate from BSE/SEBI led to his appeal in April 2024.
However, with the company listed on BSE India on 13 December 1994, the defence argued in the high court that Buch was not on the board of SEBI at that time nor held any position.
Staying the special court order on 4 March, the Bombay HC said that Sapan Shrivastava had four weeks to file an affidavit in response.
The Cals Refineries case
Shrivastava said that he and his family, back in 2009, invested Rs 50,000 in the shares of Cals Refineries Ltd. After losing his money, he approached the police station and regulatory bodies multiple times, but there was no action against the company.
“Whenever a complaint is filed, the board (SEBI) is duty-bound to act upon it,” Shrivastava told ThePrint.
Under the Right To Information, Shrivastava found out Cals Refineries Ltd had not complied with the listing requirements and filed his appeal in the special court in April last year under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988.
On the defence’s argument that Madhabi Puri Buch was not with SEBI during the company’s listing, Shrivastava said, “It is not whether Buch was the chairperson in 1994. When I wrote to the SEBI sometime earlier in 2023, she failed to take action against Cal Refineries and officers of BSE under the SEBI Act.”
He also alleged that Buch and others “engaged in round-tripping, insider trading, and price manipulation, misleading investors into believing that the company was financially sound”, as mentioned in the special court order.
ThePrint has access to a copy of the order.
In the high court, Buch’s lawyer said that the information regarding the company’s compliance with the SEBI Act and obtaining NOC or consent was unavailable. However, the defence argued that it did not establish that Cal Refineries had not complied with SEBI rules, according to the high court order document.
According to the defence, the special court ignored the point that there was no basis for Shrivastava’s allegations. Shrivastava alleged that Buch failed to take action under Section 15HA of the SEBI Act, 1992. But, “Section 15HA was introduced in the SEBI Act only in the year 1995,” Buch’s lawyer argued. Cals Refineries Limited was listed in 1994, and Shrivastava and family purchased its shares in 2009, so “he could not have suffered loss from any irregularities in the company in 1994”. The defence also argued that Shrivastava filed the appeal only after losing money.
Speaking to ThePrint, Shrivastava said he did not approach the court earlier because he planned to complain only after receiving the RTI reply to his enquiries about Cals Refineries.
Who is Sapan Shrivastava
Sapan Shrivastava, 48, is a resident of Dombivali, likes to call himself a “media reporter” and also runs a portal called India RTI News since 2014.
Earlier, he used to work with a private company but left the job to start India RTI News. In Dombivali, Shrivastava and his team file RTIs to “expose white-collar corruption”, putting up any evidence they uncover on their portal for public knowledge.
Shrivastava said he has filed several PILs on different matters since 2014—mismanagement in schools, hospitals, civic bodies, etc. Some were successful, whereas many others were not.
“In those previous cases, nobody made any personal allegations against me. This is the first time they (judges) made personal allegations against me,” Shrivastava said. “They even remarked that I was doing extortion by threatening ICSE schools.”
The comment harked back to a 2019 PIL by Shrivastava, claiming the illegal functioning of thousands of schools affiliated with the Council for Indian School Certificate Examination (ICSE) and that the human resources department did not approve them. In that case, the court had dismissed the PIL and imposed a fine of Rs five lakh on Shrivastava.
In the last four to five years, Shrivastava has started submitting an Interlocutory Application (IA) with the main petition and using previous Supreme Court and high court orders to make a stronger case. IA is used to bring new facts to the knowledge of courts.
Shrivastava said he had been investing in the share market since 2008 but initially had been a novice. However, as news trickled down about various companies going bankrupt and mismanagement in the companies, he started becoming more cautious as an investor and reading the SEBI Act. As his interest in knowing more about the companies and their Initial Public Offers (IPOs) grew, he started filing RTIs for various companies.
“Then, I realised I should also file an RTI for the company where I lost a lot of money, i.e., Cal Refineries. That is how I found out there was no NOC,” he said.
What the HC said
On Saturday, the special ACB court in Mumbai, responding to Shrivastava’s appeal, ordered the launch of an FIR against Madhabi Puri Buch and five others, including whole-time members of SEBI and senior BSE officials, over alleged financial fraud, regulatory violations, and corruption. Shrivastava had sought directions to the police station for an FIR and investigation into the alleged offences committed by the accused, including Buch.
Although the special court noted that Shrivastava put substantial material on record to support his allegations, the Bombay High Court Tuesday called it “false allegations against Buch just to settle his grievances against the company”.
“The impugned order is unjust, harsh, onerous and causes serious prejudice to the applicant (Buch), and as such, is required to be quashed and set aside,” the HC said. “… it appears that the special judge has passed the order mechanically without going into the details, and without giving proper opportunity to the respondents to file their say.”
In its remarks against Shrivastava, the HC said he was “a habitual complainant who has filed several vexatious proceedings, which have come to be reprimanded by the courts, with costs”.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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