One of many eagerly-awaited Netflix releases this Friday is Scoop, directed by filmmaker Hansal Mehta. The sequence is predicated on the true life story of Mumbai-based journalist Jigna Vora, who was arrested for allegedly conspiring with gangster Chhota Rajan within the killing of veteran crime reporter J Dey in 2011. Whereas Rajan was sentenced to life imprisonment, Vora was acquitted seven years after the killing.
Scoop, primarily based on Vora’s memoir Behind Bars in Byculla: My Days in Jail, stars Karishma Tanna within the lead position and options Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, Harman Baweja, and Prosenjit Chatterjee in supporting roles. Within the trailer, Tanna says: “Downside yeh hai ki both you break a narrative or the story breaks you.” This greatest describes Vora’s journey.
Who’s Jigna Vora?
Vora was a journalist who labored as against the law reporter for Asian Age newspaper in Mumbai. She did her legislation diploma from Ruparel Faculty in Mumbai and later did a diploma course at Somaiya Faculty the place Velly Thevar, her college and well-known crime reporter working for the Occasions of India influenced her to take up crime reporting. Upon her mother and father’ compulsion, Vora was pressured to surrender her internship with a reputed legislation agency to comply with a wedding to a person who was supposedly an engineer and ran a printing press in Baruch, Gujarat. She later found that these claims weren’t true; the wedding ended on a bitter observe. In Might 2004 Vora moved again to her maternal house in Ghatkopar, Mumbai, the place she determined to pursue her profession in media alongside being a mom to her four-year-old son.
Vora joined the Free Press Journal (FPJ) in November 2005 as a court docket reporter the place her first process was to cowl gangster Abu Salem’s case on the TADA court docket located inside Arthur Highway Jail. After three years within the FPJ, Vora earned a place with Mumbai Mirror the place her assigned beat was the periods court docket at Kala Ghoda Mumbai. Her interplay right here with many accused and recognized criminals led her to take up crime reporting. Vora coated her first underworld story in December 2005 when Sujata Nikhalje who additionally occurs to be
Gangster Chhota Rajan’s spouse was arrested for extortion threats in opposition to a builder. Whereas working for Mid-Day, Vora set out on a giant story about controversial encounter specialist Pradeep Sharma that shook the nation.
In 2008, Vora joined the Asian Age and coated the sensational story of Jaya Chheda, who deliberate the homicide of her ex-husband to get management over his thriving enterprise in Mumbai.
J Dey homicide
It was in 2011 that her life and promising profession got here to a standstill. Vora was 37 years previous and held the put up of deputy bureau chief of the Asian Age’s Mumbai bureau. She was one of many two predominant suspects within the homicide of crime journalist Jyotirmoy Dey (J Dey), who was shot and killed in Mumbai by unidentified assailants in Hiranandani, Powai, whereas onlookers witnessed the incident. The murderers had been ultimately recognized as being a part of a seven-person group linked to the underworld gangster Chhota Rajan. After conducting an preliminary investigation, the Mumbai police charged Rajan and Vora.
The case was handed over to the CBI in 2016. Whereas Vora denied all of the allegations and claimed that she contacted the gangster only for an interview, the costs in opposition to her acknowledged in any other case. In reference to the investigation, Mumbai police detained Vora on November 25, 2011. She was charged with giving particulars about Dey, together with his residence and the license plate variety of his bike to Rajan. After 9 months in jail, she was launched on bail in 2012 from Byculla Jail in Mumbai. She was solely cleared of all of the accusations after seven years within the 2018 particular Maharashtra Management of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) court docket as a consequence of lack of proof.
After battling this robust section in her life Vora is now a tarot reader and healer who has been therapeutic individuals and predicting their future by way of astrology for the previous 5 years. She can also be carrying ahead analysis and writing internet sequence and films primarily based on the identical. In Behind Bars in Byculla: My Days in Jail, she paperwork her trauma after being framed for homicide. Vora wrote about how she sternly denied all of the allegations that had been made in opposition to her when she was interrogated by her fellow inmates proper after her arrest.
She detailed traumatising days and nights spent in jail, court docket hearings, and her years as against the law reporter breaking many front-page tales. Vora additionally shared about how she was requested to strip by girl constables whereas she was on her interval, and likewise opened up about her friendship with Pragya Thakur in jail.
“On my aluminum plate, I had two chapatis, dal, and a few greens. “Strands of black hair floated within the watery dal. I put the plate apart and wept once more. Pangs of ache cramped my abdomen. I had hardly eaten since my arrest. I felt weak and exhausted, however I couldn’t deliver myself to eat the meals I had been served,” she wrote within the e book.
Within the e book she additionally highlighted the plight of feminine prisoners at Byculla Jail and her days spent consuming unhygienic meals, scrubbing bathrooms, and cells with not even sufficient gentle to see her fellow inmates. The e book additional delved into the accusations that had been levelled in opposition to her and the way investigators discovered circumstantial proof of her hyperlinks with gangster Rajan.
