Cinema VinesFilmmaker Hansal Mehta is on the brink of completing the third entry in his “Scam” anthology, titled Scam 2010: The Subrata Roy Saga. The new series, announced in May 2024, chronicles the meteoric rise and subsequent downfall of Subrata Roy Sahara, the controversial founder of Sahara India Pariwar. After spending more than two years in jail over the protracted SEBI‑Sahara investor refund case, Roy’s story is now being dramatized for television.
Marathi actor Siddharth Bodke has been cast to portray Roy, while Kritika Singh and Moon Banerjee play his wife Swapna Roy and mother Chhabi Roy, respectively. Aditya Srivastava also appears in the cast. The narrative is drawn from Tamal Bandyopadhyay’s book Sahara: The Untold Story, which serves as the primary source material for the series.
Production has spanned several Indian cities. Filming began in Lucknow, where Sahara’s headquarters are located, and extended to Kanpur‑Bithoor, Malihabad and other nearby locales. Subsequent schedules took place in Noida, Delhi and Dehradun, with the final leg now underway in Mumbai. The show’s working title remains Scam 2010, and the city of Roy’s hometown, Gorakhpur, will also feature in the storyline.
When approached for comment, Mehta declined to speak on the project and directed inquiries to Applause Entertainment, which has yet to respond. The series, which was launched in May 2024, has attracted legal scrutiny from Sahara. A source from the group confirmed that a lawsuit is still pending, noting that the series “has Sahara India Parivar’s full‑page disclaimer on its opening page.”
Roy, who passed away on 14 November 2023 at the age of 75, founded Sahara India Pariwar in 1978. By 2004, the conglomerate was described by Time magazine as “the second largest employer in India after Indian Railways.” The new series aims to capture the complexities of his business empire and the controversies that surrounded it.
Mehta’s “Scam” franchise has previously tackled other high‑profile financial scandals. Scam 1992: The Harshad Mehta Story (2020) focused on the 1992 stock market scam involving Harshad Mehta and was adapted from the book The Scam: Who Won, Who Lost, Who Got Away by Sucheta Dalal and Debashish Basu. Scam 2003: The Telgi Story (2023) explored the 2003 stamp paper counterfeiting scandal involving Abdul Karim Telgi, drawing from Sanjay Singh’s Telgi Scam: Reporter's Diary. Both series were directed by Mehta (or his collaborators) and starred prominent actors such as Pratik Gandhi, Shreya Dhanwanthary, Gagan Dev Riar, and Mukesh Tiwari.
