Scoop Review: Jigna Vora Was A Twisted Case And The Creators Are Very Clear About It

Just like Scam 1992, Hansal Mehta’s Scoop doesn’t take sides. It is a transparent show where you get to see many sides of a coin. Some professions are such that you can give no clean chit to professionals. You will always suspect that a person who has reached a certain position must definitely have a lot of gray shades in his/her personality because without leaning on the darker side, one just cannot shine here. Media and Police are few such professions. 

As you know, Scoop is based on the journalist, Jigna Vora’s book, Behind Bars In Byculla: My Days In Prison. I haven’t read the book so I cannot tell you whether the series has done justice to the book but if we keep that book aside, Scoop is a decent web series. It shows you all the sides of all the parties involved. A lot like Pratik Gandhi’s Scam 1992. 

Instead of taking sides, you keep questioning what might have gone wrong and who might have been the real culprit. Even though the culprits were named, you still find yourself questioning whether what was told back then was true or was it just a cover-up. 

What Is Scoop All About? 

Let’s keep Jigna Vora’s case aside and talk only about the web series for a while. In Scoop, we see Jagruti Pathak making her way to the top as a crime reporter. After working as a crime reporter for different reputed publications, she is now the Deputy Bureau Chief of Eastern Age. Her Editor-In-Chief, Imran is not just her boss but also a good friend. We see Jagruti’s stories being shortlisted for publication most of the time while other reporters struggle to convince Imran that their story is also worthy of being told. This also puts forth the angle of professional rivalry. 

Jagruti Pathak, a single mother, is the only lady in the Pathak family who has a successful ‘CAREER’ and is still climbing the ladder of success. Her nana, mama, and entire family is proud of her. While she struggles to maintain a balance between her personal and professional life, we often see Jagruti giving preference to her stories over everyone else. As the story moves forward, every single character that is introduced in the series tells her how Jagruti befriends her sources and can even pick a fight with fellow journalists who try to contact her sources for a piece of information. She is sweet but ambitious, passionate, and aggressive as well. 

While Jagruti is away on a vacation, she gets a phone call where she is informed that Jaideb Sen is shot. As she begins her research, she is the first person to ask JCP Harshvardhan Shroff about the police force’s involvement in the murder. 

Jaideb Sen, being a senior reporter who was also working on a story that might have exposed a lot of people, mainly the nexus that would have shocked the entire nation, Jagruti’s questions make sense. 

Shortly, we see the police targeting the entire community of reporters after they chase and start reporting about a senior officer’s rivalry/possibility of his involvement in Jaideb Sen’s murder. In an unfortunate turn of events, Jagruti Pathak becomes the suspect. No, she is not the murderer but the one who might have instigated the murderer. 

After a lot of back and forth and spending nine months in prison, Jagruti Pathak gets bail. 

That’s the whole story of Hansal Mehta’s Scoop. 

WHAT DOESN’T WORK FOR SCOOP? 

The template is Scam 1992. It is a similarly written show. Though the storytelling has been handled really well, I would have really appreciated it if Scoop would have looked like a new show when it comes to presentation. 

Secondly, what I hate the most is the similarity of prison scenes in all the web series/films. Showing people puke where they are eating or the ugliest toilets where the protagonist is forced to clean it with hands is all getting repetitive now. People will argue that this is what happens with inmates but we have seen it already. Thanks for telling us what is happening in the prison – the sexual assaults, the gunda/gundi inmate, the politics, the crime behind the bars, the innocent criminals, the followers, the leaders – we have seen everything. Thanks to the filmmakers! Enough of it… 

Thirdly, the characters of Rambha Ma (said to be based on Jaya Chedda) and Sharda Maa (said to be based on Sadhvi Pragya Thakur) are not well-developed. They were just guest appearances in the show. 

WHAT WORKS FOR SCOOP?

In high profile cases like that of Jaguti Pathak in Scoop, it is difficult to tell what exactly might have happened. Who might have killed Jaideb Sen as he might have had countless rivals – from professional rivalries to hardcore criminals, everyone must have been after his life. To cover up or to save someone, someone else needs to be targeted. But when we speak of professions like media, do professionals truly lose their mind and ethics for stories? From circulating murders recorded on camera to being the first publication to post a dead body of an actor, do they really know where to stop?

Some questions will never be answered…