1. Who Was Harshad Mehta?
Harshad Mehta was a well-known stock broker, alleged to have manipulated the stock market in 1992 by drawing funds from banks fraudulently with worthless bank receipts and subsequently using this liquidity to buy huge amounts of shares at a premium across many industry verticals.
Born as Harshad Shantilal Mehta in 1954 to a lower middle-class Gujarati family, Mehta spent his early childhood in Kandivali, Mumbai, whilst his father ran a small business. However, the family had to shift to Raipur in Chhattisgarh for medical reasons.
Mehta completed his schooling in Raipur but never showed much promise. He moved back to Mumbai alone after completing school, completed his B.Com from Lajpat Rai College and took up odd jobs – from selling hosiery to sorting diamonds – for the next eight years.
His journey to becoming the ‘Big Bull’ Mehta began when he landed a job as a sales person at The New India Assurance Company. It is here that he got interested in the stock market, following which he quit and joined a brokerage firm in 1981. By the year 1990, Mehta had risen from rags to riches and had become a prominent name in the Indian stock market.
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