Bad Boy Billionaires: India Released on Netflix, Minus Ramalinga Raju Episode

Bad Boy Billionaires: India is finally available on Netflix in India and across the world, after a District Court in Bihar lifted its injunction over the weekend, Netflix lawyer Amit Shrivastava told Reuters earlier on Monday. Three out of the docu-series' four total episodes are now streaming: “The King of Good Times” about Kingfisher's Vijay Mallya, “Diamonds Aren't Forever” about jeweller Nirav Modi, and “The World's Biggest Family” about Sahara's Subrata Roy. The fourth and final episode, about Satyam's Ramalinga Raju, isn't available as that's part of a separate injunction from a Hyderabad court.

Netflix had originally set an early September release for Bad Boy Billionaires: India, but that didn't come to pass after both Roy and Raju obtained a stay on the series, with the former claiming it would malign his image, and constituted an unlawful invasion of his privacy, respectively. On October 3, Roy's petition was dismissed, Reuters quoted Shrivastava as saying. The Araria, Bihar court has yet to release its official order. Netflix India offered no comment.

Update 7pm October 5: Sahara's team mailed a response to Gadgets 360, calling the documentary "ill motivated, incorrect, misleading." The statement concludes with the following message: "Sahara has already filed criminal cases against Netflix and their promoters, producers, directors and reporters etc. The law will take its own course against such mis-adventurous exercises of Netflix." You can see the full statement from Sahara at the end of this article.

There's no word on when the fourth episode based on Raju will be made available. A hearing on the matter is scheduled for Monday at the Telangana High Court, which observed Friday that the Hyderabad court should have watched the episode before granting an injunction, and noted that an individual couldn't block a documentary that's based on information available in the public domain.

Bad Boy Billionaires: India is a British docuseries, produced by Minnow Films and Jigsaw Productions. Francis Longhurst and Reva Sharma served as producers, with Brad Hebert, Stacey Offman, Richard Perello, Morgan Matthews, and Ricardo Pollack as executive producers. Dylan Mohan Gray is the director.

Update 7pm October 5: Full statement from Sahara:

Netflix series featuring an episode on Sahara contains various incorrect and misleading facts, which depict only one sided allegations of the story and deliberately omits and ignores the factual truth. Such incorrect and misleading facts have been expressed and depicted through the interviews of some disgruntled people, who were at some part of time, related to Sahara or were maintaining some personal grudges against Sahara.

The hopelessly ill-motivated documentary gives misleading information about businesses and functioning of Sahara and its case with SEBI. While expressing opinion with regard to interviews of a few investors, the documentary has conspicuously spelt half truth by concealing the fact that the Supreme Court had, vide its judgment dated 31.08.2012, clearly directed SEBI to make refund to the investors and though the SEBI is holding about 22,000 crore Rupees of Sahara, it has only repaid about Rs. 107 Crores to the investors in last 8 years, and thus the allegations of non-payment to investor is only on account of blame to SEBI and cannot be fastened against Sahara. The so-called investigative documentary of Netflix has conveniently suppressed such glaring omissions forged with ill-motives.

The documentary is technically misguided, when it uses words like Chit Fund, against legally founded businesses of Saharas, commenced within regulatory/ legal framework.

Contents of the film, instead of admiring the entrepreneurship and patriotism of Mr. Subrata Roy Sahara and Sahara India Pariwar, it has used the statements which are defamatory and maliciously made in the garb of journalistic freedom. Netflix, being wholly owned subsidiary of foreign entities, in law, it has no protection of fundamental rights of free speech and expression. Sahara has already filed criminal cases against Netflix and their promoters, producers, directors and reporters etc.

The law will take its own course against such mis-adventurous exercises of Netflix.