BCCL
The 72-year-old chairman of Indian conglomerate Sahara India Pariwar, Subrata Roy's story is the quintessential rags-to-riches one.
Roy went on to build an empire spanning across fields like finance, infrastructure & housing, media & entertainment, health care, education, hospitality, and information technology. He hobnobbed with the high and mighty and wielded political influence in India’s most-populous state, Uttar Pradesh.
At one time, even some of India’s iconic film stars and cricketers have been at his beck and call. The halo wore away and the empire crumbled as the country’s market regulator pulled him up for financial scam where he allegedly defrauded small investors of money to the tune of ₹25,000 crore.
Roy denied it and put up a brave front. At his trial, nearly all of Delhi’s most famous lawyers, across party lines, including some who went on to be ministers, represented him. But, the cookie had crumbled by then.
Roy was eventually released on parole from Tihar Jail when his mother passed away two years after his detention. In a recent development earlier this year, Roy claimed in the court that he had cleared most of the dues demanded by SEBI, and requested the court to remove the security personnel assigned to him.