New Delhi, Jan. 10 -- Ketan Parekh was a serial entrepreneur of systemic rot.

First penalized for his role in the 1992 securities scam, he resurfaced by the turn of the millennium with a personalized version of market manipulation that eventually bore his name.

To understand Parekh, one must look at him not merely as a fraudster but as a master operator who refined the crude, blustering circular trading of the past into a high-frequency, institutionalized machinery of deception.

Born into a lineage of Mumbai stockbrokers, Parekh was groomed in the pits of the Bombay Stock Exchange. A chartered accountant by training, he began his career at NH Securities, his father's firm, before migrating to the orbit of Harshad Mehta at GrowMore Rese...