The dramatic consequences of a report last week by an activist short-seller about India’s second-largest conglomerate, the Adani Group, raises questions not only about the group itself, but also about India’s regulatory regime and even its growth model.

In its 106-page report, New York-based Hindenburg Research accused the multibillion-dollar Adani Group, which has seven listed companies in various areas of infrastructure, of “brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud” over decades and asserted that the share prices of the group’s companies, which have risen meteorically, are overvalued by up to 85 per cent.