The Home Ministry has ordered an intensive investigation into the alleged leak of a report purportedly prepared by the Intelligence Bureau, leading to fall of share prices of many small and mid-cap companies.
The “top to bottom” probe will try to find out the content of the circulated report, the people behind the alleged leak and whether any vested group was trying to manipulate the market through the purported report.
The share prices of many small and mid-cap companies had crashed last week in anticipation of a crackdown by regulators on stock market operators named in the purported IB report.
The report has been in circulation in the markets for nearly a week. Stocks in the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) small-cap index that fell a little over 45 per cent over this period include Parekh Aluminex, Midfield Industries and Comfort Intech.
In the BSE mid-cap index, Ruchi Soya, K S Oil and Shree Ashtavinayak fell around 26 per cent. During the period, the BSE small-cap index fell 7.5 per cent while the BSE mid-cap index lost 4.8 per cent.
The report said to be prepared by outgoing IB chief Rajiv Mathur, apparently named stock market operators like Ketan Parekh, Vimal Rathod, Sanjay Dangi, Raju Barter, Ashok Poddar, Manish Marwah, Dinesh Singhania, Raj Agarwal and C Sivasankaran.
