Scam 1992: The Harshad Mehta story

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Scam 1992: The Harshad Mehta Story is associate degree Indian financial thriller streaming television series on Sony LIV directed by Hansal Mehta, with Jai Mehta serving as co-director. Based on 1992 Indian exchange scam committed by several stockbrokers including Harshad Mehta, the series is tailored from journalist Sucheta Dalal and Debashish Basu‘s 1992 book The Scam: Who Won, Who Lost, Who Got Away. The dialogues were written by Sumit Purohit, Saurabh Dey, Vaibhav Vishal and Karan Vyas.

 

It stars with Pratik Gandhi as the protagonist Harshad Mehta, with Shreya Dhanwanthary appearing in a very parallel lead role, as Sucheta Dalal. The series conjointly features Satish Kaushik, Anant Mahadevan, Rajat Kapoor, KK Raina, Lalit Parimoo, Hemant Kher and Nikhil Dwivedi in important roles. The series focuses on Harshad Mehta‘s account, his meteoric rise and therefore the sequent downfall.
Originally made by Sameer Nair of Applause Entertainment, Hansal Mehta, worked for 3 years in writing the script. The project was formally proclaimed in December 2019, with principal shoot following its announcement. Recorded across two hundred locations in Mumbai, in eighty-five days, the shooting was closed in March 2020. The cinematography was handled by Pratham Mehta and therefore the series was edited by Sumit Purohit and Kunal Walve. Achint Thakkar composed the background score.
Scam 1992 was premiered on Sony LIV on 9 Oct 2020. The series eventually received praise from the performances of the forged members, writing and therefore the major technical aspects. It became the foremost viewed net series on the streaming platform.

Story Line

Harshad Mehta is a normal Gujarati salesperson who lives in a very incommodious one-room lodging in Mumbai’s Gujarati dominated residential district of Ghatkopar along together with his parents, wife and brother. When doing all types of odd jobs, he joins the Bombay Stock Exchange as a “Jobber”. Unhappy together with his growth, he before long, starts his own business firm. Exploiting loopholes within the market system and bribing numerous officers, he before long amasses a large quantity of wealth. In a very parallel narrative, journalist Sucheta Dalal is working on Mehta’s business after obtaining a tip from a cashier regarding Mehta’s involvement in a very scam in State Bank of India.

1st Episode

“Risk Se Ishq”

 

The episode begins with Sucheta Dalal narrating the increase in the Indian economy and the Bombay Stock Exchange in the 1990’s. On twenty-two Apr 1992, Sharad Bellary, associate degree worker of State Bank of India comes to the Times of India office to report regarding a fraud worth ₹500 Crores. He reports it to Sucheta (Shreya Dhanwanthary) and tells that Harshad Mehta (Pratik Gandhi) is behind the fraud. Within the early years, Harshad lived in a very materialistic family together with his wife Jyoti, brother Ashwin, father Shantilal and mother Rasilaben. Shantilal closely-held a textile business, however it wasn’t that successful. Thus, Harshad had to try to some odd jobs to take care of the family. He got annoyed with the money drawback. Thus, he thought of operating in the share market. He got employment as a distributor (Jogger) in the Bombay Securities Market. He befriended Bhushan Bhatt, who tutored him a number of the fundamentals. Harshad struggled on the 1^st day, however he went on to become one in every of the most effective jobbers within the market. Then he began to gather info, that helped him to focus on sure stocks to create profit. However, he wished to extend his profit. thus, he quit his job and opened his own commerce account together with his brother Ashwin, that made his father annoyed. Later, Ashwin gets married and therefore the whole family shifts to a replacement lodging. So as to extend profit, Harshad began spreading fake information regarding the stocks that he targeted. During this manner, he managed to win the support of Pranav Sheth, one of the bulls of BSE who was clearly affected together with his skills. In 1982, the market crashed on Black Friday because of the actions of the BSE Bear cartel and Ajay Kedia and Harshad and his brother had to cope with a loss of ₹10 lakhs.

2^nd Episode

“Cobra Killer”

In 1982, the market crashes and the brothers go down in deep loss of 10 lakhs. Harshad somehow manages to pay 3lakh but still in  debt of 7 lakhs. To clear his debts, both brothers along with his father go to the investor with some gold jewels and house papers. But as the investor was kind hearted he refuses to take the house papers. And said “paisa kaha jaa raha hai” then Harshad requested him to open his merchant to reopen his trading account but he denied due to the unpaid money. Later his father dies in trauma and with this shock Harshad is a fatherless broke. To clear his debts and gain some funds to reopen the trading account, he started a consultancy named Growmore and in no time his competed with the ‘black cobra’. In the other scenes it is clearly seen that his company is touching hights and Harshad been able to manipulate the market with a turnover of 1crore.

3^rd Episode

“Paise Ki Dukaan”

Once the money market catches Harshad’s fancy, he launches his own team of brokers and starts coping with banks. And to keep his reputation in the market he pays off all his due before time which caused him a loss but he had some long-term plans. Due to the lack of funds, he knocks the door of institutional investing the big companies like UIT and L.I.C. As due to the lack of funds he fixes a meeting with the chairman of UTI but he clearly refuses to do business with him because of his techniques. Later his friend takes him to a party where he meets Ajay Kedia a man with a very rich money background of money market. And his family dominates stock-market for years. Here Harshad gets the idea to use the funds of money-market to gain some profit in stock-market. Now Harshad wants to go inside Money- market but his partners refuse, then he said “Business has its saturation point, not human brain. So always keep on learning and trying new things.” Here’s the new chapter begins.

4^th Episode

“Harshad Mehta may be a Liar”
Harshad’s fulminant success catches the eye of the monetary journalist, Sucheta Dalal who was actively trying to find proofs against him. She started meeting new peoples and finds new discoveries about Harshad that how Harshad is manipulating the market in this recession period. Harshad is taking funds from banks and PSUs. And on the other hand, Harshad is busy in convincing the other companies that there market value is under rated and he can help them to go up in return he asks for some shares and funds. Shortly he’s been able to launch his own IPO (Initial public offerings). Later Harshad takes the lone of 500crores from the SBI and the story takes a new turn.

5^th Episode

“Kundli Mein Shani”
The RBI Governor on seeing suspect group action in Harshad’s SBI account asks the bank to keep an eye on his fund movements. Harshad in his safeguarding  tries to brush off 500 crores from the books. After the raid of income tax department which he knew will take place got nothing from his office and home but ceased his account office. In a meeting with Door-Darshan that what’s the Harshad’s view on economy, he shares a tip “that invest more on the growing India” and after this tip the stocks goes up. Later the CEBI  celebrating its 3000 points high in NSE. The governor of SBI tells the other investors to sell the stocks not to buy. Just to cooldown the market but lack of evidence against Harshad he was also been able to do nothing. With the further investigation on Harshad’s account, the governor is now finally been able to suspect somethings, further investigation revealed his 500crores debt dues. Now Harshad is in, down with a lot of troubles.

6^th Episode

“Stop Press”
this episode is totally based on the investigation of Sucheta on Harshad’s fraud of 500crores. She tries very hard to confirm this news from various senior members of the accounts departments of SBI but as usual they denied the fact that the problems are not in the books but its literally there and disconnected her line. While Harshad clears off most of his debts to SBI, Sucheta, on receiving a tip from Bellary, simply will not hand over her ordeal of exposing the fraud of ₹500 crores. Both of them just had twenty-four hours to turn the tables.

7^th Episode

“Dalal Street Ka Dariya”

In the starting scene its clearly seen that the news article is published on the Times of India but the senior editor changed the name of Harshad Mehta to ‘THE BIG BULL’ because he knows that if the news goes fake, he’ll file a back case against the institute. On the other-hand Harshad has cleared all his debts and becomes an advance tax payer, neglecting the news article in a conference he reveals that he took 500crores from SBI but has paid them back in big amounts and also paid all the investors in large amounts. In the later scene the stock-market falls to the deepest of all the times and the stocks of Harshad are damaged now, he shows his concerns over the downfall of the market. Venkitarajan gets to grasp that there are multiple banks concerned within the cash scam which the scam is way larger in stature than what it seems on the surface. RBI installs an investigation committee and later reveals that it’s not about the fraud of 500crores but a huge amount of 5000crores and that changes the game.

8^th Episode

“Matadoor”
In the scene Sucheta founds out that the source of information was the governor of RBI itself but the never accepted it. Once Sucheta gets to grasp from Venkatarajan regarding the involvement of NHB within the scam, she releases this news that leads CBI to begin with interrogation of Pherwani. Harshad fears of Pherwani telling the reality. After Pherwani’s death, CBI raided Harshad’s house and took him beneath custody.

9^th Episode

“Ek Crore Ka Suitcase“

The government tries to negotiate with Harshad and his advocate, however it didn’t work. And at some point, Harshad in conjunction with his advocate Mr. Ram Jethmalani conducts a news conference within which they publicly announced everybody that the then Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao had been given a case of ₹1 crore by Harshad to finance the By-election candidature.

Final episode

“Main History Banana Chahta Hoon”
CBI pressurizes each Mehta and the Growmore clints forcing most of the shoppers scaring to be within the jail. Delhi strikes a deal with Harshad, supported that he withdraws his press statement. Growmore gets back to life with most of Harshad’s assets being frozen. However, Bhushan’s revelation is shortly reaching to flip Harshad’s world the other way up. Bhushan sells out Harshad’s shares because of torture from the Central Bureau of Investigation. Harshad and his brother Ashwin were both mad at Bhushan for this act. Not knowing about Bhushan’s plan beforehand, Harshad informs the CBI concerning some fraud in his company. Due to this fraud, the CBI thinks that Harshad is concerned in an exceedingly new scam and arrests him. Later after a few months of arrest, Harshad Mehta is suffering with a heart problem inflicting his death from attack. The episode ends wherever the police keep his body within the Lobby of Thane police station.

The whole series has some very good amount of twist and turns and fills the audience with thrill, entertainment and knowledge. An appreciated work by the team and the crew members. The scripting of the series is fantastically done. As an honest viewer I would rate this series on the scale of 9/10 and that’s why it’s the most famous series and liked series in this era. Must watch and enjoy with family.