# The Girlfriends: Spotlight, E24: Sucheta Exposes the Big Bull

An episode of [The Girlfriends: Flight or Fight](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1695875823), 13 Jul 2026, 39 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/c2c81cb2-988e-4194-8382-b02e011bf37a/7a593461-ee37-4f65-897c-b47200b43d2d/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=289822ba-519c-4151-be1f-b02e011e1914

In 1992, the Bombay Stock Exchange in India was skyrocketing. And at the centre of this chaotic, testosterone fuelled world was Harshad Meta: a man with aviator shades, a Lexus, and a reputation as a financial wizard. To millions, he was "The Big Bull," a self-made hero who promised wealth to anyone who followed his lead. But Sucheta Dalal, one of the only female journalists covering the financial markets, wasn’t buying the hype. When she started digging into Harshad Meta, she uncovered something explosive. She had 24 hours to get to the bottom of it - with her career, and the fate of the Indian economy on the line. This is the story of how one dogged journalist exposed a scam so big it sparked a financial revolution. The Girlfriends: Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeartPodcasts. For more from Novel visit novel.audio See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:02] Speaker 1: When you step onto the trading floor at the Bombay
[0:04] Speaker 1: Stock Exchange, you're hit by a sea of movement. Stockbrokers
[0:12] Speaker 1: in buttoned down shirts jostle and barge each other out
[0:15] Speaker 1: of the way. They frantically wave their hands to show
[0:19] Speaker 1: the changing stock prices. Pens and paper are flying. It's
[0:23] Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two and each trade gets noted down by hand.
[0:28] Speaker 2: Every time a new.
[0:29] Speaker 1: Man enters the crowd, and yes they are all men,
[0:33] Speaker 1: they stop by a statue of the Hindu god Ganesh
[0:36] Speaker 1: and pray for luck.
[0:37] Speaker 2: They're going to need it.
[0:39] Speaker 1: Here at the stock Exchange, things are always chaotic, but
[0:44] Speaker 1: today the energy is bordering on manning. The smell of
[0:48] Speaker 1: fear is in the air. For the first time in
[0:51] Speaker 1: a long while. Share prices aren't going up. They're plummeting.
[0:57] Speaker 1: India's stock markets are in free and across the city.
[1:03] Speaker 1: Cuchetta de Laal's phone starts ringing.
[1:07] Speaker 3: I was in office. We didn't have television at that time.
[1:10] Speaker 3: We couldn't see it live until I began to get gold.
[1:13] Speaker 3: Seeing that, you know how much the index is crashed,
[1:17] Speaker 3: and frankly, it was really chilling.
[1:19] Speaker 1: UK Suchetta is a finance journalist at this time.
[1:24] Speaker 2: She's one of the.
[1:25] Speaker 1: Only women who covers the macho lions den of the
[1:28] Speaker 1: trading floor, and with every call she receives, the news
[1:32] Speaker 1: just gets worse.
[1:34] Speaker 3: It was, I think in person digital the biggest crash
[1:38] Speaker 3: you know ever. I was like, oh my god, she.
[1:42] Speaker 1: Isn't just godsmacked by the scale of the crash. Though
[1:45] Speaker 1: it is unbelievable. What's even more shocking for Suchetta is
[1:49] Speaker 1: the fact that all of this is happening because of her.
[1:52] Speaker 1: She's just broken the biggest story of her life, and
[1:55] Speaker 1: it's blown the Indian economy apart. Souchetta uncovered something so
[2:07] Speaker 1: huge it sparked a transformation of India's entire financial system seriously,
[2:13] Speaker 1: and she did it at a time when being a
[2:15] Speaker 1: woman in her field made her a total outlier. Souchetta
[2:19] Speaker 1: is a hardcore, take no prisoners journalist on a mission.
[2:24] Speaker 2: To speak truth to power.
[2:28] Speaker 1: I'd want this girlfriend in my corner any day. I'm
[2:35] Speaker 1: Annison Field and from the teams at Novel and iHeart Podcasts,
[2:39] Speaker 1: this is the Girlfriend's Spotlight, where we tell stories of
[2:43] Speaker 1: women women.
[2:59] Speaker 2: Today.
[3:00] Speaker 1: Souchetta exposes the big bull in India in the nineteen eighties,
[3:08] Speaker 1: it was hard for a woman to get into any
[3:10] Speaker 1: kind of job in journalism, but Suchetto wanted to work
[3:13] Speaker 1: in one of the toughest sectors.
[3:16] Speaker 3: Breaking into financial journalism or business journalism was almost impossible,
[3:21] Speaker 3: and I was too young to know that. And we're
[3:23] Speaker 3: talking about mid eighties and we're all young and idealistic.
[3:28] Speaker 1: Souchetta didn't start out wanting to be a journalist. She
[3:31] Speaker 1: grew up in a small town in the southwest of India, then.
[3:34] Speaker 2: Studied statistics at university.
[3:37] Speaker 1: But when she moved to the big city Mumbai, or
[3:39] Speaker 1: as it was called back then, Bombay, she met other
[3:42] Speaker 1: women who were working as reporters and suchett was inspired.
[3:47] Speaker 1: So she started applying for jobs and managed to land
[3:49] Speaker 1: two interviews on the same day.
[3:52] Speaker 3: One was called Eves Weekly Behaca was a women's magazine,
[3:56] Speaker 3: and the other was Fortune in India, which was an investment magazine.
[4:00] Speaker 3: So I got both the jobs.
[4:03] Speaker 1: Suchetta has a choice to make a woman's weekly or
[4:07] Speaker 1: a hard nosed financial paper. She talks it through with
[4:10] Speaker 1: her younger brother.
[4:11] Speaker 3: So that's when my brother said, no, you've got a
[4:14] Speaker 3: background in statistics, why don't you go to Fortune India
[4:17] Speaker 3: and I said, I don't know. Think I don't even
[4:20] Speaker 3: know about business families and their names. Is it's so
[4:23] Speaker 3: what because both were going to be equally new to me.
[4:26] Speaker 3: And so I joined Fortune in India, and believe me,
[4:30] Speaker 3: it was stuff.
[4:31] Speaker 1: It's a steep learning curve, but Cuchetta is a quick learner.
[4:36] Speaker 1: One of her colleagues shows her the ropes and she
[4:38] Speaker 1: gets to know all the financial jargon and who the
[4:41] Speaker 1: major players of the business world are. But it's a
[4:44] Speaker 1: struggle to persuade her bosses to let her do any
[4:47] Speaker 1: actual reporting. Most of the time she's stuck behind a
[4:50] Speaker 1: desk proofreading her male colleagues work, and so she starts
[4:54] Speaker 1: looking for a new job.
[4:56] Speaker 3: When I actually wanted to get into reporting. Then I
[4:59] Speaker 3: realized this this huge transparent wall out there, which you
[5:03] Speaker 3: know you don't even know about.
[5:05] Speaker 1: One day, suchatta guy is for an interview at another
[5:08] Speaker 1: business paper.
[5:09] Speaker 3: I think they decided to no, they don't want a woman.
[5:12] Speaker 3: So they said, you know, the editor and the publisher
[5:16] Speaker 3: was supposed to come in for the interview, not just
[5:17] Speaker 3: supure achief. And he's not in, so you know that
[5:21] Speaker 3: the interview is not happening today when he comes back
[5:23] Speaker 3: when you call you. And I had a friend working
[5:26] Speaker 3: in another paper of the same group, so I'm sitting
[5:28] Speaker 3: in chatting with her, and I saw the editor and
[5:31] Speaker 3: publisher was very much around, and I saw him walking
[5:34] Speaker 3: to his cabin. So I realized that, you know, they're
[5:37] Speaker 3: just pretending that he's not there. I was convinced that
[5:39] Speaker 3: I'm going to call me again, And a couple of
[5:42] Speaker 3: months later they called me again, and this time I'm
[5:45] Speaker 3: there the interview, and the interview goes off. I think
[5:49] Speaker 3: quite well, but I was by then really cynical. I
[5:52] Speaker 3: wasn't expecting it. Okay. I thought they're wasting my time.
[5:55] Speaker 1: Right there in the interview, So chatta ask them point
[5:58] Speaker 1: blank if they're really serious about hiring a woman.
[6:01] Speaker 3: And you know, they said you start as a trainee.
[6:03] Speaker 3: I don't think that's happening. I mean, I don't know
[6:06] Speaker 3: what clicked, but they decided they wanted to give me
[6:08] Speaker 3: a break, and I got in. And I must say
[6:12] Speaker 3: that I've really learned a lot in those four and
[6:14] Speaker 3: a half years.
[6:15] Speaker 1: I think they probably must have recognized your determination to
[6:19] Speaker 1: get that job and saw that you would be really
[6:22] Speaker 1: good on the floor of a newsroom.
[6:24] Speaker 3: There was no woman covering the capital markets those days
[6:28] Speaker 3: at all, so even friends and colleagues didn't believe that
[6:32] Speaker 3: I actually covered the market. You have a press conference,
[6:35] Speaker 3: I used to be the only woman there, and in
[6:38] Speaker 3: fact I got quite used to it.
[6:39] Speaker 1: One of the biggest challenges Touchetta face was building a
[6:42] Speaker 1: network of sources as a journalist. I know all too
[6:45] Speaker 1: well that when nothing without the people who choose to
[6:47] Speaker 1: share their stories with us. As a woman, Suchetta was
[6:51] Speaker 1: already an outsider, and then on BAI in the eighties,
[6:55] Speaker 1: she was bound by a different set of social norms
[6:57] Speaker 1: to her male colleagues. Something as simple as meeting a
[7:01] Speaker 1: source alone for a coffee could get misconstrued. It must
[7:04] Speaker 1: have been so frustrating, but Si Chester is philosophical about it.
[7:08] Speaker 3: Things were tough, okay, And when I look back, a
[7:11] Speaker 3: lot of times people say, you know what, you singled
[7:14] Speaker 3: out because you were a woman. Did you have a
[7:16] Speaker 3: tougher time? I'm not sure, because I think it would
[7:20] Speaker 3: have been tough for anybody.
[7:22] Speaker 1: Souchetta also faced another barrier, nepotism. Lots of the other
[7:26] Speaker 1: reporters on her beat had friends and family and high places.
[7:30] Speaker 1: One time, Suchetta got scooped on a story she'd been
[7:33] Speaker 1: chasing because another reporter was family friends with one of
[7:36] Speaker 1: the key players.
[7:38] Speaker 3: I'm never going to beat that g because I'm never
[7:41] Speaker 3: going to have that kind of sources and or it's
[7:43] Speaker 3: going to take me years and decades. So I then
[7:46] Speaker 3: stopped aiming for the top okay, and started aiming for
[7:50] Speaker 3: people who actually I didn't the know and doing the work.
[7:53] Speaker 3: My boss has a hierarchy were he never allows me
[7:56] Speaker 3: as a CUB reporter. It's tough reporter to get anywhere
[8:00] Speaker 3: near the top guys. But I get all the stories,
[8:03] Speaker 3: you know, because I get it from the guys who
[8:05] Speaker 3: are doing the work, who are actually doing the deals,
[8:08] Speaker 3: who are writing out the contracts, and the other people
[8:11] Speaker 3: I'm talking to, and I'm getting more stories than them.
[8:14] Speaker 1: So Chetta is tenacious with an instinct for a good story.
[8:18] Speaker 2: It won her respect.
[8:20] Speaker 1: One time she writes a story revealing that work is
[8:23] Speaker 1: at the Stock Exchange. We're planning to go on strike,
[8:26] Speaker 1: so the exchange holds all the journalists.
[8:28] Speaker 2: In for a press conference.
[8:30] Speaker 3: They had this very intimidating round conference room and all
[8:34] Speaker 3: of us journalists were there, and as always, I was
[8:36] Speaker 3: the only woman, and the president of the Exchange and
[8:40] Speaker 3: the executive directors start this meeting, and you know, they
[8:43] Speaker 3: talk about, oh, you know, how some papers are so
[8:46] Speaker 3: careless and they write things they talk about a strike
[8:50] Speaker 3: which is not even true. And I suddenly realized that,
[8:53] Speaker 3: oh my god, this conference has been called to single
[8:56] Speaker 3: me out and to contradict my article with out saying.
[9:00] Speaker 2: So, oh my god.
[9:02] Speaker 3: Yeah. So I heard them out for a while and
[9:05] Speaker 3: then I said, listen, are you talking about me and
[9:09] Speaker 3: my story? If you are, why don't you say it
[9:11] Speaker 3: up front? But what surprised me that day is that
[9:15] Speaker 3: a lot of the senior journalists do I complete surprise.
[9:20] Speaker 3: They just backed me up, you know, and they aggressively said,
[9:24] Speaker 3: she's completely right. What are you denying? Her story was correct.
[9:28] Speaker 3: I came out there feeling so good about the fact that,
[9:32] Speaker 3: you know, you're a bunch of senior guys and they
[9:35] Speaker 3: backed me up, you know, and it was so unexpected.
[9:38] Speaker 2: God, that's so cool.
[9:40] Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, you had to be bold, didn't you.
[9:43] Speaker 1: And you're like, the way you presented yourself, the way
[9:46] Speaker 1: you stood up for yourself in order for you to
[9:47] Speaker 1: get any room in those spaces.
[9:50] Speaker 2: You really had to be a big personality.
[9:54] Speaker 3: Yes, when I think back about it, I think I
[9:56] Speaker 3: tended to sometimes and on some issues come across more aggressive,
[10:02] Speaker 3: because then that ensured that people don't mess around with me.
[10:06] Speaker 3: You know a lot of us women at least said
[10:08] Speaker 3: that I have had a choice. If you we appeel weak,
[10:11] Speaker 3: then you're out of the lease.
[10:12] Speaker 1: Right By the late eighties, Suchetta was making a name
[10:15] Speaker 1: for herself in the finance world, but that world was
[10:19] Speaker 1: changing fast. Now we're going to get into some economics here,
[10:23] Speaker 1: but stay with me because this is really important. Prior
[10:27] Speaker 1: to nineteen ninety one, India had what's known as a
[10:30] Speaker 1: closed economy. In simple terms, the aim was basically to
[10:34] Speaker 1: make the country self reliant, so things like foreign investment
[10:38] Speaker 1: and imports were heavily restricted. The government controlled the type
[10:42] Speaker 1: and number of products manufactured inside the country.
[10:45] Speaker 3: Did if you can get into our business? Because some
[10:48] Speaker 3: bureaucrat would sit in a ministry and say, oh, we
[10:51] Speaker 3: have six companies doing this, So does a matter If
[10:54] Speaker 3: people are eating for two years, you don't need another
[10:57] Speaker 3: car manufacturer. You don't need another Scuto manifest And that's
[11:01] Speaker 3: why you had these third waiting lists. If you wanted
[11:04] Speaker 3: a telephone, you had to wait for two and three
[11:06] Speaker 3: years to get a phone connection. To get a gas connection,
[11:11] Speaker 3: if you wanted to book an automobile, you had a
[11:14] Speaker 3: choice of two and you had a waiting list.
[11:17] Speaker 1: By the end of the eighties, the Indian economy was
[11:19] Speaker 1: in trouble, big trouble. Things got so drastic that in
[11:23] Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one the government was forced to borrow money
[11:26] Speaker 1: from the International Monetary Fund and as a condition of
[11:30] Speaker 1: that lending, India had to open up its economy to
[11:33] Speaker 1: the rest of the world. How much did that change
[11:36] Speaker 1: things for kind of ordinary.
[11:39] Speaker 3: People or dramatically? I mean, it's just like a real world,
[11:43] Speaker 3: you know, because we let in foreign companies come in,
[11:47] Speaker 3: we let foreign investment come in, and the world was
[11:51] Speaker 3: itself changing.
[11:52] Speaker 1: Get that done, and that must have been a really
[11:54] Speaker 1: exhilarating time to be in finance reporting.
[11:58] Speaker 3: Absolutely, it just changed journalism, right because suddenly the world
[12:03] Speaker 3: was much bigger. People were reading more, so new newspapers
[12:07] Speaker 3: were launched right, so many of us, in fact, our
[12:10] Speaker 3: careers got fast tracked. So there were more women coming
[12:14] Speaker 3: into journalism, many women writing on business, on finance on politics,
[12:18] Speaker 3: on crime. I think life just changed for all of
[12:21] Speaker 3: us in the dead at that time.
[12:25] Speaker 1: But where things are changing fast, there'll always be somebody
[12:28] Speaker 1: ready to take advantage. This brave new world ushered in
[12:31] Speaker 1: a new class of financial gurus ready to show India
[12:35] Speaker 1: how to get rich quick, And so Chetta was about
[12:39] Speaker 1: to discover that one of them wasn't all he seemed.
[12:44] Speaker 2: After the break, Meet the Big Bull.
[12:56] Speaker 1: A man is silhouetted against a bright blue sky, leaning
[12:59] Speaker 1: on a car while a photographer snaps pictures of him.
[13:03] Speaker 1: One hand is in his pocket, artfully rumpling his gray
[13:07] Speaker 1: double breasted suit. On his other wrist, a gold bracelet
[13:11] Speaker 1: peeks out from his shirt puff, glinting in the sun.
[13:15] Speaker 1: He has carefully brushed hair parted on one side, a mustache,
[13:18] Speaker 1: and of course aviator shades. The whole look is pure
[13:24] Speaker 1: nonchalant nineties swagger.
[13:27] Speaker 2: Oh and the car, it's a Lexus.
[13:31] Speaker 1: That might not sound like a flex, but in India
[13:34] Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety one it's.
[13:36] Speaker 2: A big one.
[13:37] Speaker 3: India had two cars. A fear to an ambassador. Anyone
[13:41] Speaker 3: with a foreign car worth you know, a few billion
[13:45] Speaker 3: rupees and other than diamond merchants, nobody owned a foreign car.
[13:49] Speaker 1: The man smising for the photographer is Harshed Meta, and
[13:54] Speaker 1: in the Indian finance world of the early nineties, he's
[13:57] Speaker 1: a rock star.
[13:58] Speaker 3: He and his brother were employees in an insurance company,
[14:01] Speaker 3: are very ambitious and wanted to get into stockbroking. He
[14:06] Speaker 3: was flying high. He was buying up companies. He was
[14:09] Speaker 3: like the big daddy in the stock market, and he
[14:12] Speaker 3: presented himself like a movie start, so he was dressing
[14:16] Speaker 3: up in the most expensive clothes, flashy cars. He'd got
[14:20] Speaker 3: this absurdly big apartment. It had a swimming pool, which
[14:25] Speaker 3: at that time was like super luxury, which Indians hadn't seen.
[14:29] Speaker 1: Before all the upheavals of the eighties and nineties, India
[14:32] Speaker 1: didn't really have a big culture of ordinary people investing.
[14:36] Speaker 1: But with the economy opening up, everything was changing and
[14:40] Speaker 1: harsh It Matter was the poster boy for this new era.
[14:44] Speaker 1: He played off his family's humble origins and sold the
[14:47] Speaker 1: idea that you too could make your fortune on the
[14:50] Speaker 1: stock market if you followed his advice.
[14:54] Speaker 3: Everybody said, oh, well, if Harshit can do it, we
[14:56] Speaker 3: can do it. You know, all you need to do
[14:58] Speaker 3: is buy the right stocks, the right time, and they're
[15:01] Speaker 3: going to keep going up. So he was selling dreams
[15:05] Speaker 3: very consciously, and I think he felt that he's going
[15:09] Speaker 3: to be like this fine piper. Millions of retail investors
[15:12] Speaker 3: were hanging on to what he says, and people were
[15:15] Speaker 3: following him. I believe people used to go and listen
[15:18] Speaker 3: to what his driver had to say. So the driver
[15:21] Speaker 3: held caught in the morning to say what did Harshad
[15:24] Speaker 3: Meta discuss? And they were happy to buy the stock
[15:26] Speaker 3: only if they heard him talking about it in the car.
[15:29] Speaker 1: Everything Harshited Meta touched seemed to turn to gold. He
[15:33] Speaker 1: even got his own nickname, the Big Bull the picure.
[15:36] Speaker 2: What does that mean?
[15:37] Speaker 3: It just means that you're the biggest bull operator on
[15:41] Speaker 3: the exchange.
[15:42] Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety one, India was in the middle of
[15:44] Speaker 1: what's known in finance jargon as a bull run. That's
[15:48] Speaker 1: when the market is booming and stock prices just keep
[15:51] Speaker 1: on going up. Bull operators buy and sell shares expecting
[15:56] Speaker 1: their value to increase, and Harshited Meta was the biggest
[16:00] Speaker 1: bull of them all. His enemies in the financial world
[16:04] Speaker 1: were the bears. I know, I know, bulls and bears
[16:07] Speaker 1: is like some whole weird testosterone fueled animal kingdom. The
[16:11] Speaker 1: bears are pessimists. They're betting on share prices going down,
[16:16] Speaker 1: not up. Compared to harsh It Meta, the Indian bear
[16:20] Speaker 1: cartel was old money. The big Bull wanted to shake
[16:24] Speaker 1: up the establishment and show the bears who was boss.
[16:27] Speaker 3: He did a photo shoot with India Today of feeding bears.
[16:31] Speaker 2: As in actual life bears.
[16:34] Speaker 1: Harsh It went to the zoo with a media crew
[16:36] Speaker 1: and fed paynuts to the bears to assert his alpha
[16:40] Speaker 1: status and the.
[16:41] Speaker 3: Bear cardle the extremely wealthy, well placed generations of wealth
[16:46] Speaker 3: so to be seen as feeding them, being seen as
[16:49] Speaker 3: people who were negative, not wanting something positive, want stocks
[16:54] Speaker 3: to go down rather than go up. While this man
[16:57] Speaker 3: is thinking of the country and thinking of how to
[17:00] Speaker 3: help everyone make everyone rich. And the story he was
[17:04] Speaker 3: peddling is that if I can do it, all of
[17:06] Speaker 3: you can be as rich as iron. It was a
[17:10] Speaker 3: nice story. Yeah, it's a nice story. I can say.
[17:13] Speaker 1: It's a bit Robin hood esque that you can buy into.
[17:17] Speaker 1: But also it's got a smidge of the Donald Trump
[17:19] Speaker 1: about it.
[17:22] Speaker 3: Yes, I think so. I think it was a little naive.
[17:25] Speaker 3: I would say, yeah, you know, he was wired to
[17:28] Speaker 3: be super optimistic. He probably just felt that he had
[17:31] Speaker 3: control of the whole system. Everybody was eating out of
[17:35] Speaker 3: his hand, And I guess this kind of idolation probably
[17:38] Speaker 3: goes to your head.
[17:39] Speaker 1: And I'm sure he loved the nickname the Big Bull.
[17:42] Speaker 1: That's a compliment.
[17:43] Speaker 3: Oh absolutely yeah.
[17:45] Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety one, everyone seems to think that harship
[17:48] Speaker 1: Matter is some kind of financial wizard who could do
[17:51] Speaker 1: no wrong. Everyone that is, except for Seacheta.
[17:56] Speaker 3: I should seem to be able to have an endless
[17:59] Speaker 3: supply of cash to keep buying shares at the market,
[18:02] Speaker 3: and nobody knew where it was coming from. A lot
[18:05] Speaker 3: of journalists were all part of this bandwagon. Many people
[18:08] Speaker 3: were happy, they were praising him, and there were no
[18:11] Speaker 3: questions asked.
[18:12] Speaker 1: Souchetta isn't convinced by harsh as Rags to Riches's story.
[18:16] Speaker 1: In fact, she's starting to suspect that the Big Bull
[18:19] Speaker 1: could be full of bas.
[18:22] Speaker 3: I get a call one day from a source who says,
[18:25] Speaker 3: you know, I've been reading your stories and I think
[18:28] Speaker 3: that you would probably be the only one who would
[18:31] Speaker 3: write what I tell you about what's going on in
[18:33] Speaker 3: the market. So can we meet, because I think you
[18:36] Speaker 3: need to listen to what's going on.
[18:38] Speaker 1: Suchesa meets the guy late one evening at a restaurant
[18:41] Speaker 1: where they won't be overheard. The source claims he had
[18:44] Speaker 1: secretly bribed someone at the State Bank of India to
[18:47] Speaker 1: cut a deal with him, and he says he's not
[18:49] Speaker 1: the only one up to some dodgy dealings.
[18:52] Speaker 3: He says, I'm telling you this upfront because I don't
[18:55] Speaker 3: want to pretend that I'm, you know, cleaner than anybody else.
[19:00] Speaker 3: But I'll tell you this is not the way I
[19:01] Speaker 3: want to do business. I did not like the fact
[19:05] Speaker 3: that I had to do this because there's no other
[19:07] Speaker 3: way for me to break into getting any business from
[19:11] Speaker 3: this bank because the whole system is got soaker up.
[19:15] Speaker 1: And I'm sure you can guess who is right in
[19:17] Speaker 1: the middle of this whole mess, harshared Matter. The guy
[19:22] Speaker 1: claims that the reason harsh It has so much money
[19:25] Speaker 1: is because of his shady deals with politicians. Those deals
[19:29] Speaker 1: have allowed him to persuade very large government financial institutions
[19:34] Speaker 1: to buy his shares in bulk at ramped up prices.
[19:38] Speaker 3: Do they extend that he was saying that he's virtually
[19:40] Speaker 3: running their treasury? Said that's where the money's coming from.
[19:43] Speaker 1: He then uses this money to pump the same set
[19:46] Speaker 1: of stocks even higher. It's a big accusation. This source
[19:51] Speaker 1: is basically claiming that harshed Matter is using fraud to
[19:55] Speaker 1: manipulate the financial markets. So if this is true, it
[19:59] Speaker 1: means the entire higher system is propped up on a
[20:02] Speaker 1: house of cards. Suchetta meets with her source again and again,
[20:07] Speaker 1: talking late into the night, but before she can write anything,
[20:11] Speaker 1: she needs evidence. It won't be easy to go up
[20:15] Speaker 1: against someone as powerful and influential as harshered Meta. Then
[20:20] Speaker 1: one day in April nineteen ninety two, Suchetta is on
[20:24] Speaker 1: her lunch break at the Times of India where she works.
[20:27] Speaker 1: One of her colleagues comes over. He says, a guy
[20:30] Speaker 1: has turned up at the office and he's got a
[20:32] Speaker 1: story to tell.
[20:33] Speaker 3: So he brought this guy along and says, guys, seeing
[20:36] Speaker 3: something about Stidbank of India and Rush and Lixus and
[20:40] Speaker 3: all that, why don't you listen to him and see
[20:42] Speaker 3: what he's talking about.
[20:43] Speaker 2: The man starts talking.
[20:45] Speaker 1: He tells her that the State Bank of India has
[20:48] Speaker 1: discovered a massive hole in their finances worth five hundred crawl.
[20:53] Speaker 1: That's the equivalent of about one hundred and ninety million
[20:56] Speaker 1: dollars at the time. The bank believes that her should
[21:00] Speaker 1: Meta illegally diverted the money into the stock market to
[21:04] Speaker 1: fund his own investments. Now, the man says, Harshed has
[21:09] Speaker 1: driven to the State Bank of India's office in his
[21:11] Speaker 1: shiny Lexus for a crisis meeting. The bank wants him
[21:16] Speaker 1: to pay back the money quietly so they can keep
[21:18] Speaker 1: the whole thing hushed up. Sucheta can hardly believe what
[21:22] Speaker 1: she's hearing.
[21:23] Speaker 3: I thought he was making up the five hundred cord number,
[21:26] Speaker 3: but I thought it could be five fifty crows. And
[21:30] Speaker 3: I said, what proof do you have here? Nothing? He says,
[21:33] Speaker 3: Come with me and see everybody is talking about nothing
[21:36] Speaker 3: but hush than the Lyxes.
[21:38] Speaker 1: This could prove that everything Suchetta had heard about Harshed
[21:42] Speaker 1: Meta is true. His entire financial empire propping up the
[21:46] Speaker 1: stock market is built on fraud. But Suchetta doesn't have
[21:50] Speaker 1: long to find the evidence to back it up. Harsh
[21:53] Speaker 1: Ed is supposed to pay back the money the next day.
[21:56] Speaker 3: My worry was if he bears back the money, will
[21:59] Speaker 3: I don't have a shred you know, on which to
[22:02] Speaker 3: hang it. Once the money is paid back, In all fairness,
[22:06] Speaker 3: I wouldn't be able to say that I believe he
[22:10] Speaker 3: took out this money and he gave it back. But
[22:12] Speaker 3: now it's all paid back, then it's a non story,
[22:15] Speaker 3: right because once the money was paid, nobody was going
[22:18] Speaker 3: to do admit there was a problem at all.
[22:23] Speaker 1: Suchetta has twenty four hours to figure it out. If
[22:28] Speaker 1: she gets it right, she could bring down harsh it
[22:30] Speaker 1: Matter once and for all. If she gets it wrong,
[22:34] Speaker 1: it could cost her career. After the break, Souchetta takes
[22:42] Speaker 1: the big.
[22:42] Speaker 4: Bull by the horns, glad you have got you, gat you,
[22:55] Speaker 4: I've got you.
[22:57] Speaker 2: At the offices of the Times of India.
[23:00] Speaker 1: So Chatta is railing from the bombshell tip off she's
[23:03] Speaker 1: just received.
[23:04] Speaker 2: But she springs into action.
[23:06] Speaker 1: The first thing to Chatta needs to do is figure
[23:09] Speaker 1: out whether hardship Matter really is. At the secret meeting
[23:12] Speaker 1: at the State Bank of India, I could have.
[23:15] Speaker 3: Walked into the State Bank canteen, I would have stood
[23:17] Speaker 3: out like a sore thumb, right, So I had a
[23:19] Speaker 3: colleague working for me. I said, would you like to go?
[23:21] Speaker 3: And you know at least look at whether at least
[23:23] Speaker 3: that part is true. So he went along and he
[23:26] Speaker 3: came back and said, yeah, you're all talking about her
[23:27] Speaker 3: should driving in and Lexus. So the car attracted I think,
[23:32] Speaker 3: more attention than anything else and led to all this
[23:35] Speaker 3: gossip in the bank and you know, things leaking out,
[23:38] Speaker 3: and he definitely was summoned to the MD and the
[23:41] Speaker 3: chairman's office. So then I worked the phones and I
[23:44] Speaker 3: asked a lot of people, what's happening, everybody to dime
[23:46] Speaker 3: this is, let me get back, Let me get back.
[23:48] Speaker 3: And I remember making thirty or forty calls to everybody
[23:52] Speaker 3: I could think of, you know, try to piece together
[23:55] Speaker 3: all my sources in the bank, and everyone had some
[23:58] Speaker 3: little thing that they would be able to say, Yeah,
[24:01] Speaker 3: I think he was in trouble. Yeah, I heard about
[24:04] Speaker 3: this meeting with the City Bank and he was trying
[24:07] Speaker 3: to sell a bunch of his stocks to them to
[24:09] Speaker 3: get liquidity. Why would he do that unless he was
[24:12] Speaker 3: in financial difficulty. So there were little bits and pieces
[24:16] Speaker 3: that people were putting together which said that, yes, there
[24:20] Speaker 3: was reason to believe there's some kind of trouble brewing.
[24:23] Speaker 3: I finally was able to confirm with enough of people
[24:26] Speaker 3: that it is true and it's most likely to have happened. Okay,
[24:31] Speaker 3: I didn't have a piece of paper to back it up.
[24:33] Speaker 3: It's all here sick and can't write a story like
[24:36] Speaker 3: this right. We were asked speak to the chairman of
[24:40] Speaker 3: State Bank which had lost some money, and he said,
[24:43] Speaker 3: it's sad. It's a figment of some journalist's imagination. Nothing
[24:47] Speaker 3: of that sort has happened. Then we said, okay, talk
[24:50] Speaker 3: to harsh Metha. So Hushad Metha also said, no way,
[24:54] Speaker 3: complete lies. Someone's making it up.
[24:56] Speaker 1: See Chatter doesn't believe harsh It or the chairman of
[24:59] Speaker 1: the stype. But it's tough to persuade her editors around
[25:02] Speaker 1: the story in the face of these denials, and she's
[25:05] Speaker 1: nearly out of time.
[25:07] Speaker 3: So my boss said, listen, you have to get a
[25:09] Speaker 3: confirmation to somebody.
[25:10] Speaker 2: In SBI, that's the State Bank of India, at least.
[25:13] Speaker 3: A verbal confirmation or if we're not going to be
[25:15] Speaker 3: able to carry it, which is fair enough. So then
[25:18] Speaker 3: I finally had a source who used to be a
[25:22] Speaker 3: very sober kind of gentleman who would not have given
[25:25] Speaker 3: me this story okay, but I called him up and
[25:28] Speaker 3: I said, listen, I know that you're not going to
[25:30] Speaker 3: talk about this, but I want to tell you something.
[25:33] Speaker 3: It's a story I want to write today. If it
[25:36] Speaker 3: is wrong, I think my career is over. But I
[25:40] Speaker 3: want to narrate what I have put together and what
[25:43] Speaker 3: I've gathered. Just answer with a yes or no. Can
[25:47] Speaker 3: I run with it or can I not? Right? So
[25:50] Speaker 3: I narrated it to him what I had and I said,
[25:53] Speaker 3: what do you think? And he says, okay, yes and
[25:57] Speaker 3: bang the phone down. Wow. That was my only confirmation
[26:03] Speaker 3: about the story.
[26:04] Speaker 1: On the twenty third of April nineteen ninety two, the
[26:07] Speaker 1: Times of India runs su Chatter's story.
[26:10] Speaker 3: So even the next day in office, there was nothing.
[26:13] Speaker 3: Nobody had a clue about what was brewing in the
[26:16] Speaker 3: financial world. Even when I went to the market, I
[26:19] Speaker 3: could see this buzz and that people were wanted and
[26:22] Speaker 3: all loki and people looking scared, and you know, no
[26:26] Speaker 3: one's talking about it. By that evening, I began to
[26:29] Speaker 3: get this sense of panic because everybody was cleaning up
[26:32] Speaker 3: their books, checking their stocks. The chairmen had called meetings
[26:36] Speaker 3: of treasuries.
[26:37] Speaker 1: The next day, the chairman of the State Bank of
[26:39] Speaker 1: India decides to speak to the press, but he doesn't
[26:42] Speaker 1: call Suchetter. He gets in touch with a different paper
[26:46] Speaker 1: to reassure everyone in the financial world that nothing is wrong.
[26:50] Speaker 3: So he said, you know, we got the money back.
[26:53] Speaker 3: It was actually six hundred and twenty five pro We
[26:56] Speaker 3: have all the money and there's no problem anymore. So
[27:00] Speaker 3: he was doing the right thing as a banker in
[27:02] Speaker 3: order to not create panic. But in the process he
[27:04] Speaker 3: confirmed by story one hundred percent right. So the confirmation
[27:08] Speaker 3: that I had was this interview the next day where
[27:12] Speaker 3: he admitted in the process of saying all is well,
[27:14] Speaker 3: you know I've got my money back.
[27:16] Speaker 2: It's too late to put the Jennie back in the bottle.
[27:19] Speaker 1: The Big Bull has been outed as a fraud, and
[27:22] Speaker 1: now that Seitchester has broken the news, even more revelations
[27:26] Speaker 1: start coming to light.
[27:28] Speaker 3: It was like a daisy chain, so it turned out
[27:30] Speaker 3: that everybody was involved, moving from one bank to another,
[27:34] Speaker 3: and there was just complete lawlessness in the market because
[27:37] Speaker 3: it wasn't just this one scamp. So the fact that
[27:40] Speaker 3: we wrote the story, it just sort of broke that
[27:43] Speaker 3: whole chain of trust. Suddenly everybody was matching the books
[27:47] Speaker 3: and they realized this lawlessness had been going on for
[27:49] Speaker 3: two years, so suddenly I'm thrown into this where my
[27:53] Speaker 3: story is making it to Parliament, people asking questions talking
[27:56] Speaker 3: about it. The market is crashing.
[27:58] Speaker 1: When Sietchester first popped her story, the stock markets were closed,
[28:02] Speaker 1: the brokers were striking over new regulations in the finance industry.
[28:07] Speaker 3: With four days the market had been shut. And I
[28:10] Speaker 3: think that made it worse because complete panic had set in.
[28:14] Speaker 3: The parliament was opened, the opposition was being for blood,
[28:18] Speaker 3: wanted the Finance minister to resign, and all this the
[28:22] Speaker 3: market opened, so obviously the selling pressure was incrediblely just crashed.
[28:26] Speaker 1: It's one of the largest financial crashes in India's history.
[28:31] Speaker 1: Many of the people who trusted Harship matters advice and
[28:34] Speaker 1: followed his investing tips have lost their money. But Suchetta
[28:39] Speaker 1: hasn't just exposed the big ball. She's also exposed massive
[28:43] Speaker 1: cracks in the entire banking system.
[28:45] Speaker 3: Everything about the system needed to be cleaned up. India
[28:49] Speaker 3: was so short of foreign exchange that foreign banks thought
[28:52] Speaker 3: that they could get away with whatever they wanted because
[28:55] Speaker 3: the government would not have the courage to act against them.
[29:00] Speaker 3: There was insider trading rampant inside of trading, and even
[29:04] Speaker 3: politicians were trading in the market, so nobody wanted to
[29:06] Speaker 3: clean it up because it was nobody's interest to have
[29:09] Speaker 3: a clean market, right, So when the scam happened, suddenly
[29:13] Speaker 3: everyone wanted to wash their hands off and show that
[29:16] Speaker 3: they're doing something. So they demanded the setting up of
[29:19] Speaker 3: a joint parliamentary committee. And it turned out that there
[29:22] Speaker 3: were twenty five thirty odd banks and they were at
[29:25] Speaker 3: least eight or nine different kinds of frauds that were
[29:28] Speaker 3: happening simultaneously.
[29:30] Speaker 2: Wow.
[29:31] Speaker 1: I mean you just like blew the whole financial worlds
[29:35] Speaker 1: totally open.
[29:36] Speaker 3: The first trigger, yes, and case a lot of the
[29:39] Speaker 3: stories afterwards.
[29:39] Speaker 1: I mean, you temporarily turned India and its finance world
[29:46] Speaker 1: on its head.
[29:47] Speaker 2: You must have felt either powerful or terrified.
[29:51] Speaker 3: Terrified terrified. You remember, India has very high tolerance for corruption.
[29:57] Speaker 3: So there are enough of people who were and they
[30:00] Speaker 3: are facing a loss. Their attitude is, we don't care
[30:05] Speaker 3: what happens. We shouldn't lose money. So their thing was, oh,
[30:09] Speaker 3: if she hadn't written the story, we wouldn't have lost money.
[30:12] Speaker 3: You would get called to say be careful, you know,
[30:15] Speaker 3: And I found later that there were people who were
[30:17] Speaker 3: following me. Then there was somebody who had a private
[30:21] Speaker 3: agency to find out who my sources were. And then
[30:24] Speaker 3: one day I get this envelope in office, and you know,
[30:28] Speaker 3: there are lots of letters that you get, right, so
[30:30] Speaker 3: it was one of them. Is an envelope. I open
[30:31] Speaker 3: it and there's powder that falls out. And those were
[30:34] Speaker 3: the days when there used to be that Amtrak's coming
[30:37] Speaker 3: in the mail. Remember, I remember just dumping it and
[30:40] Speaker 3: going and washing my hands, and I believe it or not,
[30:44] Speaker 3: it was just a scared because we hesitatingly went and
[30:47] Speaker 3: looked at what it was and it was just wheat flower.
[30:52] Speaker 3: But somebody had, you know, dot the sick thing of
[30:55] Speaker 3: putting it in an envelope and sending it to just
[30:58] Speaker 3: create a fright.
[30:59] Speaker 2: Oh my god.
[31:00] Speaker 1: But so Chester is so matter of fact when she
[31:03] Speaker 1: talks about all of this, but it sounds intense. I
[31:06] Speaker 1: can only imagine how terrifying it would have been to
[31:08] Speaker 1: open that envelope full of white powder. The fact that
[31:11] Speaker 1: so many powerful forces wanted to keep her quiet just
[31:15] Speaker 1: shows how much impact her reporting was having. It must
[31:18] Speaker 1: have taken a lot of courage to keep writing. Then, Monday,
[31:22] Speaker 1: she heard from the person you'd expect to be the
[31:24] Speaker 1: most pissed off of all.
[31:27] Speaker 2: And how did Haushad Mesa react to your story?
[31:31] Speaker 3: Hushid was an interesting character, you know. He one of
[31:33] Speaker 3: his key virtues was his ability to charm people and
[31:38] Speaker 3: get along with people. So I also think that the
[31:41] Speaker 3: audacity to pull off something like this, or to even
[31:45] Speaker 3: manipulate the market, you're wired completely differently, right. Yeah, So
[31:49] Speaker 3: even when all this was happening, he was on a high,
[31:53] Speaker 3: full of them set. So I remember one day he
[31:55] Speaker 3: calls me up and he says, oh, you know, Madage,
[31:59] Speaker 3: we should sometime. I said sure, I mean, you know,
[32:02] Speaker 3: I'm a journalist. ID fantastic And I thought he would
[32:05] Speaker 3: be really angry and I said, yes, sure thing. And
[32:08] Speaker 3: he says, you broke the study of the decade, but
[32:11] Speaker 3: you believe it. He actually said that.
[32:14] Speaker 1: The audacity clearly harshed matter signed up to the idea
[32:17] Speaker 1: that no publicity is bad publicity. But the big bull
[32:21] Speaker 1: was about to be cornered. The very same day he
[32:24] Speaker 1: called Suchetta, the police arrested Harshad. He went on to
[32:27] Speaker 1: be charged with dozens of criminal offenses. It was a
[32:31] Speaker 1: spectacular fall from grace for the golden boy of the
[32:34] Speaker 1: finance world. But the legal cases turned into a battle
[32:38] Speaker 1: that dragged on for years. And in the meantime, harsh
[32:42] Speaker 1: d wasn't a type to stay out of the limelight.
[32:45] Speaker 3: He wanted to make a comeback around ninety six ninety
[32:48] Speaker 3: seven and he wanted to set himself up as an
[32:51] Speaker 3: investment guru, and he wanted a column in the Times
[32:54] Speaker 3: of Findy of It. I was writing on the same
[32:57] Speaker 3: day that I had a column, which was Monday, and
[33:00] Speaker 3: he had managed to convince the management to give it
[33:02] Speaker 3: to him because this time he was harshed the expert
[33:05] Speaker 3: and they had agreed. So I remember going to my
[33:09] Speaker 3: resident editor and saying that, look, I'm sorry, but I'm
[33:11] Speaker 3: not going to be the financial editor who carries his column.
[33:15] Speaker 3: I'm resigning. So then I was told that, okay, the
[33:18] Speaker 3: column is not happening. So I came back from leave.
[33:22] Speaker 1: I can't believe that they would want to bring him
[33:24] Speaker 1: on as a columnist.
[33:25] Speaker 3: It is amazing and that sub papers actually did it.
[33:29] Speaker 1: In the end, harsh It was only convicted on a
[33:32] Speaker 1: tiny proportion of the charges before he died of a
[33:35] Speaker 1: heart attack in two thousand and one.
[33:38] Speaker 3: This is something that I most disappointed about India is
[33:41] Speaker 3: that we just do not seem to be able to
[33:43] Speaker 3: complete any investigation. We have a very good judicial system,
[33:47] Speaker 3: which doesn't work because if cases drag on, justice delayed
[33:51] Speaker 3: is justice denied?
[33:52] Speaker 4: Right?
[33:53] Speaker 2: Yeah? But I mean who gets the last laugh?
[33:55] Speaker 3: Really, it's definitely you.
[33:59] Speaker 1: I can tell totally understand why Suchetta feels frustrated, but
[34:03] Speaker 1: the ripple effect of her reporting goes way beyond just
[34:06] Speaker 1: harshed meta. Because of what she uncovered, there was a
[34:10] Speaker 1: complete overhaul of the banking sector. New laws were passed
[34:14] Speaker 1: to regulate the stock markets and tackle fraud and corruption.
[34:18] Speaker 1: She literally changed her country's economy as a journalist. That's
[34:23] Speaker 1: the kind of impact that you can only dream of.
[34:27] Speaker 1: The story has even been turned into a Bollywood movie
[34:30] Speaker 1: and a TV series and she's still at it. Over
[34:34] Speaker 1: the years, Suchetta has exposed all kinds of different frauds
[34:37] Speaker 1: and scams. The story itself, the fact that you broke it.
[34:41] Speaker 1: It was a whirlwind at the time, But now, how
[34:44] Speaker 1: do you feel about everything that you achieved?
[34:47] Speaker 3: When I look back at me, he's forty year's leader
[34:50] Speaker 3: and I you know, We've done a tiny magazine Qualed
[34:53] Speaker 3: Money Loaf. It does a digital publication with the skeleton stuff,
[34:58] Speaker 3: and I'm quite a missed of I'm still relevant. You know,
[35:02] Speaker 3: people have expectations. We are still able to write things
[35:06] Speaker 3: that matter or have perspectives that matter, and people are
[35:09] Speaker 3: reading us.
[35:10] Speaker 1: You know, I'm interested to know what the values are
[35:18] Speaker 1: that have shaed the way you approach your journalism and
[35:21] Speaker 1: your career.
[35:22] Speaker 3: You know. I believe that a story is something that
[35:26] Speaker 3: others don't want told, not my words. They are the
[35:30] Speaker 3: reason why all of us want to be journalists, to
[35:32] Speaker 3: tell the story that others want to keep hidden. Right,
[35:35] Speaker 3: So I believe that it's my job to be neutral,
[35:39] Speaker 3: to investigate, to be fair, and to put it in perspective.
[35:43] Speaker 3: And I think I have managed to do that most
[35:47] Speaker 3: of the time, and there is a price to be
[35:50] Speaker 3: paid for it. I would have had a different life,
[35:52] Speaker 3: a different journey, a lot more fun here, a lot
[35:56] Speaker 3: of invitations, scholarships, what have you if I had done
[36:01] Speaker 3: things differently. So people ask me, why did you choose
[36:04] Speaker 3: to do it like this? Well, I am wired like that, right, Yeah,
[36:09] Speaker 3: there is no other answer.
[36:11] Speaker 1: You couldn't have done this any other way that's true.
[36:22] Speaker 1: Thank you to Suchetta de Lao, an iconic journalist and
[36:25] Speaker 1: the Matador to Harshed Spool. Keep up with her reporting
[36:29] Speaker 1: at Moneylife dot IM. If you've enjoyed this conversation, you
[36:44] Speaker 1: can find loads more incredible women on our feed. Do
[36:48] Speaker 1: check them out, and please do spread the word and
[36:50] Speaker 1: tell your friends about us. We want as many people
[36:52] Speaker 1: as possible to be part of the Girlfriend's Gang. This season,
[36:59] Speaker 1: The Our Friends Spotlight is supporting the charity Womankind Worldwide.
[37:04] Speaker 1: They do amazing work to help women's rights organizations and
[37:07] Speaker 1: movements to strengthen and grow. If you'd like to find
[37:11] Speaker 1: out more or donate to help them secure equal rights
[37:14] Speaker 1: for women and girls across the globe, you can go
[37:17] Speaker 1: to Womankind dot org dot UK. The Girlfriend's Spotlight is
[37:29] Speaker 1: produced by Novel for iHeart Podcasts. For more from Novel,
[37:34] Speaker 1: visit novel dot Audio. This episode was written and produced
[37:39] Speaker 1: by Caroline Thornham. Our assistant producer is Lucy Carr. Our
[37:44] Speaker 1: researcher is Zaiana Yusuf. The editor is Hannah Marshall. Max
[37:49] Speaker 1: O'Brien and Craig Strachan are our executive producers. Production management
[37:54] Speaker 1: from Joe Savage, Shrie Houston and Charlotte Wolf. Sound design,
[37:59] Speaker 1: mixing and scoring by Nicholas Alexander, Daniel Kempson and Dan King.
[38:05] Speaker 1: Music supervision by Jakobtivich, Nicholas Alexander, and Anna Sinfield. Original
[38:11] Speaker 1: music composed by Louisa Gerstein and Jemma Freeman. The series
[38:15] Speaker 1: artwork was designed by Christina lemcol. Willard Foxton is creative
[38:20] Speaker 1: director of Development and Special thanks to Katrina Norvel, Carrie Lieberman,
[38:26] Speaker 1: and Will Pearson at iHeart Podcasts, as well as Carl
[38:29] Speaker 1: Frankel and the whole team at w M E.

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