'Scam 2003: The Telgi Story' is a 2023 Indian Hindi-language biographical financial thriller streaming television series on SonyLIV. The show, directed by Tushar Hiranandani, with Hansal Mehta serving as the co-director is based on a true story of stamp-paper scams committed by Abdul Karim Telgi in the early 2000s. Gagan Dev Riar who plays the character of Abdul Karim Telgi has garnered rave reviews and accolades for his role and he went on to share some instances with ABP Live as well.
Sharing what made him say 'yes' to the role, he said, "Even if they ask me while I was sleeping, I would say 'yes' for this role. First of all it's a biopic kind of thing and every actor wants an opportunity like this to play a real life character. Also, it's the lead of the show, so why not."
Talking about his character, Gagan said "I play the character of Abdul Karim Telgi. He was involved in one of the biggest scams that India has ever seen. To be precise, it was a stamp paper scam. He pushed duplicate stamp papers and mixed them with the original ones and the amount of this scam was thirty three thousand crore."
Dev Riar also shared the preparations he took for the role as he had to gain quite a lot of weight. Surprisingly, he doesn't happen to be a foodie at all so gaining weight was indeed quite a task for him.
He said, "Hansal Sir asked me to gain weight when I was cast for this role and said that I need to look a little bit more on the heavier side. So I started eating a lot of things and tried to put on some weight and then met the director of the show. He said that it was not looking enough so I had to gain even more weight, and by the end of it I had gained around 18-20 kgs to portray this role. This was very difficult for me because I am not a foodie and I don't like to eat kebabs, biryanis and golgappas. I also don't like ice creams, cakes or cookies. But, I had to eat all of this at that time."
"I also went to Khanapur to understand the local dialect and then I started reading the script again and again and tried to incorporate the dialect in me and one of my co-actors also helped me a lot with this. We did a lot of readings together, changed the dialogues and asked Hansal Sir whether the change was working or not. Then I tried to watch the interviews of Abdul Karim Telgi and tried to stitch a character of how he must be walking, then his little crooked smile that he had," he added.
Gagan Dev Riar also went on to share what he happened to like about Abdul Karim Telgi while playing the role.
He said, "For once I really liked the brain that he was. I don't have any shame in saying that there was a genius behind that. What I don't like is the way it was used. If he was guided properly or if he was helped by some person to put some sense into him that this is not the right path, he would have gone a different way and maybe we would have had a new minister or a scientist or a doctor- somebody who actually helps people rather than conning them."
Scam 2003: The Telgi Story was released with 5 episodes and the remaining episodes are scheduled to release in November. Sharing the reason behind this decision, Gagan Dev Riar said, "The show was not ready because of many editing changes and vfx corrections and everything and SONY had already announced the release date but Hansal Sir said that he doesn't want to give any unfinished product. So, since five episodes were ready, he decided to release the 5 of them initally."