“In the case of Harshad Mehta, he had as sudden a fall as a meteoric rise. It exposed the loopholes of the country’s banking and financial systems and in the securities market,” says director Hansal Mehta who has emerged from a Gujarati middle-class Mumbai world. “I have grown up in that atmosphere with those aspirations and desire to make my mark,” he says. “Even I tried to emulate other people instead of pursuing my own inner journey.” Mehta recalled trunk calls with his parents when Harshad Mehta’s bull run began in the early 1990s. They would encourage him to invest money in Associated Cement Company shares. The excessive trading in the ACC stock is among the factors that led to suspicion about Harshad Mehta’s illegal methods and his subsequent conviction.
The scam was all anyone could talk about at the time, Hansal Mehta recalled. “People spoke to me about their experiences as if [Harshad] was some sort of a flawed hero figure – a hero fallen from grace for them.” Among the challenges behind Scam 1992 was to explain and simplify the complex workings of the operation for viewers. Also, to recreate the Mumbai of the 1990s. “The stock market at the time was a fish market with thousands of crores traded in a single day,” Hansal Mehta recalled. “We have tried to recreate that energy.” The series is based on the book The Scam by Debashish Basu and Sucheta Dalal. Scam 1992 stars Pratik Gandhi, Shreya Dhanwanthary, Sharib Hashmi, Satish Kaushik, Rajat Kapoor among others.
Scam 1992 is on SonyLIV from today
