New Delhi. The Supreme Court on Friday said there is no reason to doubt market regulator SEBI investigating the allegations against Adani Group in the Hindenburg report. He said that there is no fact before him to distrust the market regulator’s investigation.
Along with this, the top court said that it is considering the claims made in the Hindenburg Report as not being completely based on facts. The bench said that in the absence of any facts before it, it would not be appropriate to constitute a Special Investigation Team (SIT) at its own level.
A bench headed by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud reserved its order after hearing the arguments of the parties related to the Adani-Hindenburg case. This case is related to the allegations of stock price manipulation and fraud against Adani Group in a research report of Hindenburg Research which came out in January.
Although the group vehemently denied these allegations, there was a huge decline in the share prices of its companies.The court objected to SEBI being asked to investigate the Adani-Hindenburg case on the basis of some media reports. He said that he cannot ask a statutory regulator to accept anything published in the media as absolute truth.
The bench said, ‘We do not automatically need to accept the points mentioned in the Hindenburg Report as the ‘true state of the matter’. That is why we instructed SEBI to investigate. Because it would be really unfair for us to accept something recorded in a report, which is not before us and whose authenticity we have no means of testing.
The bench said this after one of the petitioners’ advocate Prashant Bhushan raised doubts on the role of SEBI. Bhushan had said that SEBI had all the information available about the irregularities of Adani Group since 2014. This bench also includes Justice JB Pardiwala and Justice Manoj Mishra.
