Even as Mehta prepares for an appeal in the Supreme Court against the five-year jail term announced by the Special Court -- set up only to look into scam cases -- not much has been recovered from the money lost in the scam. While the Income Tax (IT) Department is still struggling to retrieve dues from the brokers involved, banks and FIs are still out in the cold waiting to get back lost funds. While the court has convicted the mastermind behind the scam, precious little has been done to recover scam money.

The `Big Bull' who still owes Rs 812 crore to State Bank of India (SBI) topsthe RBI's list of defaulters against whom suits have been filed by banks. But Mehta continued to attract the attention of investors. After the unprecedented boom in the early '90s, which took even dud stocks to dizzy heights, Mehta managed a smaller rally in 1998 through market manipulation. Making a mockery of regulatory framework, stocks of BPL Limited and Videocon International and Sterlite Industries surged on reports Mehta had bought into them through proxies. Share prices fell back after market regulator SEBI started an investigation.

Whatever Mehta touched turned gold and investors blindly followed his moves as this was considered the best way to pick stocks and make a fast buck. The `Big Bull' poured millions into the stock markets day after day and other investors followed were impressed by the rise and put in even more money. The archaic and inefficient vigilance and monitoring mechanism allowed brokers like Mehta to divert funds. Mehta and the other protagonist of the scam -- Hiten Dalal --exploited an inefficient government securities (gilts) market regulated by the RBI.

Both Dalal and Mehta, who were securities brokers (Mehta was also a stock broker), used to receive hundreds of crores from banks and companies for buying/selling gilts on behalf of companies and banks and they used the long gap in the settlement to play the stock market. In short, Mehta and Dalal got money for securities which banks and companies never got. While Mehta used mainly SBI, National Housing Bank and ANZ Grindlays Bank, Hiten Dalal was involved in securities deals involving Canbank Financial Services, Standard Chartered Bank and others. Although they operated at the same time, Dalal and Mehta were not directly linked. There were others like Pallav Sheth, Bhupen Dalal, K Dharampal, T B Ruia and a host of officials from various banks who were linked to the scam in one way or another.

Mehta was a permanent figure in investment seminars and was the toast of bulls in cocktail circuits. His quick money spawned aflamboyant lifestyle with a fleet of cars, including a Toyota Lexus. Mehta moved into a sprawling rooftop apartment with its own private garden, in an upmarket residential building in Worli, Mumbai. Mehta's game was up when the scam was detected on April 23, 1992, and the `Big Bull' was exposed for perpetrating the biggest-ever securities scam, involving an estimated Rs 4,000 crore. The Bombay Stock Exchange suspended his membership.

Mehta's bank accounts have been monitored during the last few years and his properties, comprising some 19 flats in South Mumbai, attached. He owes Rs 5,200 crore as income tax and Rs 103 crore as wealth tax. His ``trademark'' Toyota Lexus was auctioned off in 1996 for Rs 20 lakh. When the law took its own course, Mehta handed over 51,49,214 shares of 130 companies to the Custodian under the Special Court's March 1994 order.

The loss to lakhs of investors in the 1992 scam was never estimated. Like Pied Piper, Mehta attracted thousands of ordinary people to invest in themarket, some even taking loans against their retirement and pension funds. Paanwallahs and bus conductors started talking about share prices and invested in Reliance, Tisco and others. When the lid of the scam was open, the fabled Sensex crashed by over 45 per cent. The S&P CNX Nifty (which was calculated later, fell from 1280 in April 1992 to around 700 by July 1992).

Investors who put money in high priced shares lost their shirt as prices crashed subsequently. Shares like Karnataka Ball Bearings which was pushed up to Rs 1,000 are not even quoted on the stock exchanges now. Regulators and the government stepped in after the surfacing of the scandal and took a series of steps to step up vigilance and streamline market operations in a fair and transparent manner. ``Electronic online trading was introduced, margins were collected and market vigilance was tightened,'' said a senior SEBI official.

However, history was repeated in 1998. Mehta opened an Internet site (www.harshad.com.) as an investmentadvisor, with a special ``I recommend...'' column that fascinated his followers. The prices of Harshad Mehta scrips shot up during January-April 1998 and the Sensex zoomed from 3,200 in January to 4,200 in April. However, by the middle of May this game was also up. The Big Bull's brokers were unable to pay up. The market regulator SEBI was once again caught napping. SEBI is yet to complete investigation into the role of promoters of some of the companies and their association with Mehta.

The hullabaloo over the 1992 scam has died down over the years. The enquiry by the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) and the investigation by the then RBI deputy governor R Janakiraman is now part of history. ``The status of various kinds of attached shares is so full of legal and procedural complexities that one has to tread carefully in handling the matter,'' the custodian once remarked. The recovery of scam money is going to be the biggest challenge for the investigators and tax sleuths. Mehta seems to be taking thingsin his strides. One day before the special court convicted him last week, Mehta told a wire agency: ``Everything is a gift of God... I am living in the present moment and I am not looking at what is going to happen tomorrow.''

The big question market is: will such scams occur in the future? Chances are that it will. For example, insider trading still plagues the markets. Although regulators like the RBI and the SEBI claim they had tightened monitoring of the markets, scams seem to be part and parcel of Indian markets. And common investors are always the most-affected victims. In 1992, they suffered. And again in 1998, when Mehta revisited the markets, investors lost out again. Will they suffer again?