New Delhi: Subrata Roy, founder of the vast business empire Sahara Group, died on Tuesday, November 14, following an extended battle with complications arising from metastatic malignancy, hypertension and diabetes. Roy was 75. He was admitted to Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital & Medical Research Institute in Mumbai on Sunday after his health deteriorated. Roy is survived by wife Swapna Roy and two sons, Sushanto and Seemanto.Until a decade ago, Roy was considered one of the most influential businessmen in the country. Mired in controversies, facing multiple regulatory and legal battles, his group firms accused of circumventing regulations with Ponzi schemes, in the recent years, Roy was only known to allegedly having duped investors from across the country. Roy made a modest start in 1978 with a capital of only Rs 2,000. In less than a decade, he was able to build Sahara India over the decades. The Group, as per the claims made on the official website, has 9 crore investors and customers, a net worth of Rs 259,900 crore, 5,000 establishments and 30,970 acres of land bank. According to Reuters, Sahara’s assets at one point in time included New York’s Plaza Hotel and the Grosvenor House in London. Subrata Roy was once also a co-owner of the former Force India Formula One team.Millions of poor Indians from mofussil parts deposited money in his company. These were mostly illiterate with zero to minimum access to formal banking services. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) eventually stepped in and Roy’s companies were accused of collection of over Rs 24,000 crore from over three crore individuals. In 2004, his company had over 1.2 million work force – it was only second to the Indian Railways. His name featured in the TIME magazine that year. His business – spread across retail, real estate and financial services sectors soon got embroiled in a legal tussle with the SEBI after the market regulator in 2011 ordered Sahara India Real Estate Corporation Ltd (SIRECL) and Sahara Housing Investment Corporation Ltd (SHICL) to refund the money raised from investors through certain bonds known as Optionally Fully Convertible Bonds (OFCDs) that was later ruled to be illegal. Also read: Saharashri and the SupremesRoy, however, with his close political connections, mostly with the Samajwadi Party, enjoyed both political and Bollywood clout. Starting 2010 began his slow downfall. In 2011, SEBI ordered two Sahara Group firms – Sahara India Real Estate Corporation Ltd (SIREL) and Sahara Housing Investment Corporation Ltd (SHICL) – to refund the money raised from nearly 3 crore investors through certain bonds known as Optionally Fully Convertible Bonds (OFCDs). SEBI had accused his two companies of raising the funds by violating the market regulator’s rules.In 2012, the Supreme Court had upheld SEBI’s directions asking the two firms to refund the money collected from investors with 15 per cent interest. In 2014, a local court sent Roy to jail for not paying an outstanding amount of Rs 10,000 crore. His release was conditioned on return of Rs 5,000 crore in cash and Rs 5,000 crore by way of bank guarantee. Roy spent two years in jail, before he was finally released on a parole. But this release was short lived. The Supreme Court soon sent him to jail, only for him to be later released on bail. SEBI, however, contested the bail in 2020.In a detailed investigative report, published in Caravan magazine in 2016, journalist Paranjoy Guha Thakurta had pointed to over Rs 55 crore from the Sahara Group allegedly received by Prime Minister Narendra Modi when was the chief minister of Gujarat. In the report, Guha Thakurta wrote: “The documents, which have been doing the rounds in Delhi for the last few months, suggest that during his tenure as chief minister of Gujarat, Modi—along with a number of important politicians—was paid large amounts of cash by individuals associated with Subrata Roy, the founder-chairman of the Sahara India Group. These documents also suggest that the recipients of such favours included, among others: Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh; Raman Singh, the chief minister of Chhattisgarh; Shaina NC, the treasurer for the Bharatiya Janata party in Maharashtra and; Sheila Dikshit, the former chief minister of Delhi.”These documents, the Caravan report claimed, bore “an uncanny resemblance to the infamous Jain Hawala dairies”. In 1996, these dairies, which came into the possession of the CBI, indicated those associated with businessperson Surinder Kumar Jain and his brother had made payments to a host of important political personalities such as L.K. Advani, Madhavrao Scindia, Balram Jakhar, V.C. Shukla, Madan Lal Khurana, P. Shiv Shankar and Arif Mohammed Khan, among others.
