The Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI), has ordered HDFC Bank to conduct an internal inquiry into the leaking of essential unpublished financial results, as reported by Reuters.

The decision comes in the wake of an investigation that the SEBI started following a Reuters report that stated explicit messages about the HDFC's results and other matters had circulated in the private chatroom's of Whats App application much before the official release from the company.

Reuters identified many such instances of at least 12 companies reports and HDFC Bank was one of them.

The lender's financial information "circulated in Whats App closely matched the quarterly financial results of HDFC Bank for June 2017", India's market regulator said on Friday.

It could not have been possible without the "leakage of information" from a person, or people, privy to the information, SEBI said.

It also said this pointed to the inadequacy of the processes and systems that HDFC Bank has in place.