A web series on the 1992 stock market scam masterminded by stockbroker Harshad Mehta has been announced. Applause Entertainment, Sameer Nair, will produce a 10-episode adaptation of Sucheta Dalal and Debashis Basu’s 1993 book The Scam, which detailed how Mehta gamed the financial system by selling worthless bank receipts. No director has been announced yet.
The web series will chronicle the story of the broker who “discovers a loophole in the system and achieves overnight success in the stock market”, said a press release. The series will also talk about how Dalal, a Padma Shri-winning journalist, exposed the fraud.
“It is uncanny how the banking system continues to be exploited through systemic loopholes,” Dalal said in a statement about the web series. “It was Harshad Mehta using fake BR [bank receipts] in 1992. Now it is Nirav Modi using fake LoU [Letters of Undertaking]. As if nothing has changed.”
The Scam was first published in 1993 and was updated several times over the years, significantly, after the 1998-2001 Ketan Parekh scam came to light.
Applause Entertainment is also collaborating with Nagesh Kuknoor on the web series City of Dreams, a political drama. It has partnered with BBC Worldwide to produce the Indian versions of the popular television shows The Office, Criminal Justice and The Night Of.