The Late SubrotoRoy was, no doubt, a genius, who set a new record of fraud and forgery. Millions of small investors, who were trapped by the greed and inducements of Subroto Roy; more known as Sahara Sri, never got back their hard-earned savings. Dishonest politicians of all parties had parked their ill-gotten moneywith Subroto Roy, and they vied with each other supporting and even getting close to him. Film actors and actresses used to flaunt their proximity to him. A large number of journalists, who benefitted from the largesse of SubrotoRoy sang peans during his lifetime and even after his death. Many of them did not lag behind in showing their close connections with the king of thuggery.
He was brought to books, thanks to the Supreme Court although he did not leave any stone unturned even dodging the Apex Court. When he was asked to deposit Rs. 24000crores of investors’ money to the SEBI along with documents for verification, he sent 132 truckloads containing 32 thousand cartons of documents. Some were real and genuine documents, but most of them were fakes. There was no place for the SEBI to store those documents, so some space was taken on rent. However, another good order was passed by the Supreme Court that the rent amount would be paid only by the Sahara. The SEBI later got the genuine documents digitalized.
It is a general perception among the people that Subroto Roy lived the life of a super king. He is said to have spent Rupees 500 crore on the marriage of his sons, which were attended by who’s who of the country. Many bureaucrats, politicians, journalists and industrialists were dying to get the invites to attend his sons’ marriages. His presence was found to be in almost all fields including film, journalism, television, real estate etc. but he refused to abide by the labour laws or any other applicable laws in his establishments. He had his own set of laws and demeanour to be observed by the employees in his offices. In a nutshell, his whims and fancies were the laws and the rules.
Surprisingly, even governments succumbed to his crazy ideas. He never implemented the Wage Board recommendations, the Working Journalist Act or the Industrial Disputes Act for the employees of his organisations. As a result of it, some used to receive very high salaries but many of them were denied even their minimum wages. He believed in crushing the trade unions by all tricks of the trade including even by bribing the trade unionists. Every foul means was fair for him. Sycophancy was encouraged like anything by him. What will happen to millions of investors after his death, nobody knows. Corrupt politicians, journalists and bureaucrats are not going to help them. It is only the judiciary which can give some relief, but will the fatigued investors be able to knock on the doors of the judiciary after so many years?
Let SubrotoRoy’s soul be in eternal peace and May God never send any such person as Subroto Roy again on this earth to cheat millions!