General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Shiksha Mandal

Shiksha Mandal is a 2022 Indian Hindi-language crime drama thriller web series directed and written by Syed Ahmad Afzal and released on MX Player on 15 September 2022¹. Inspired by true events, it dramatizes a medical entrance exam scam in Madhya Pradesh in which high-scoring students are paid to take the test on fake IDs for other candidates³. The nine-episode season stars Gulshan Devaiah, Gauahar Khan, and Pavan Raj Malhotra⁴.

Key fact	Detail
Original release	15 September 2022, MX Player (MX Original Series)¹^•⁵
Format	One season of 9 episodes, roughly 36 to 61 minutes each²
Creator	Written and directed by Syed Ahmad Afzal; cinematography by Subhransu¹
Lead cast	Gulshan Devaiah (Aditya Rai), Gauahar Khan (SP Anuradha Singh Srivastav), Pavan Raj Malhotra (Dhansu Yadav), Iram Badar Khan (Vidya Rai)³
Setting	Bhopal and Indore, Madhya Pradesh; based on a real medical entrance exam scam unearthed in the state in 2013¹²^•⁷
Audience rating	6.3 on IMDb; age rating UA16+⁸
Current availability	Free with ads on MX Player, Amazon MX Player, and Amazon Prime Video⁸

Spoilers

Premise and plot

The story follows Vidya Rai (Iram Badar Khan), a medical aspirant and the topper of a Bhopal coaching institute run by her brother Aditya Rai (Gulshan Devaiah). She is trapped into appearing for someone else's medical entrance exam on a fake ID, is blackmailed and kidnapped by Dhansu Yadav (Pavan Raj Malhotra), the gangster running the racket, and then goes missing after being marked absent²^•¹¹. Aditya's search for his sister draws him into the scam itself, and he is eventually arrested under it².

The series frames the racket as an entire system rather than a single villain. Well-scoring students, called "Rajus" in the scammers' vocabulary, are cherry-picked across Madhya Pradesh to sit the highly competitive medical entrance exams as proxies for weaker candidates¹³. Coaching centers, university deans, examination boards, police, media, and top government officials are all depicted as participants in a network producing fake doctors and medical students without merit³. The exposure begins when a special task force officer, Anuradha (Gauahar Khan), is assigned to the case³.

Production and release

MX Player announced the series in July 2022 under the tagline "Power Paise Ka… Scam Shiksha Ka", describing it as a social thriller about corruption, fraud, cheating, and criminal conspiracy in the education sector⁴. It premiered on 15 September 2022 as an MX Original⁵. The series was produced by Piyush Dinesh Gupta and Naam Mein Kya Rakha Hai productions¹⁰.

After Amazon acquired assets of MX Player and merged the service with Amazon miniTV into Amazon MX Player, Shiksha Mandal became part of the combined free, ad-supported library¹⁴. It is currently streamable free with ads on MX Player, Amazon MX Player, and Amazon Prime Video⁸.

Reception

Critics received the season as engaging but uneven. The Times of India gave it 3.0 out of 5, calling it an "engaging but flawed look at the education scam" and noting that subplots such as Aditya's romance and Anuradha's divorce add little depth⁷. OTTplay's review, also 3.0 out of 5, praised Gauahar Khan and Gulshan Devaiah as the only originals in an otherwise tired social drama while crediting the series with an insightful story¹³. Reviewer Deepa Gahlot wrote that the series gets the small-town milieu and dialect right but falters with too many subplots and extraneous characters¹². On IMDb the series holds a 6.3 rating⁸.

In reach, the series performed strongly for its platform. A Chrome Data cross-media measurement report ranked it second among measured shows with a reach of 39.10 million viewers, ahead of House of the Dragon (31.20 million) on that list⁹.

Context among education-scam dramas

Shiksha Mandal belongs to a cluster of Indian streaming titles built around the same real-world material. The Times of India's review groups it with Halahal (2020), The Whistleblower (2021), and Crash Course (2022) as fictitious recreations of the scam unearthed in Madhya Pradesh in 2013⁷. Leisurebyte's review likewise compares it to The Whistleblower, finding Shiksha Mandal sometimes too familiar in structure but noting that its missing-student mystery gives the institutional corruption a personal cost⁶.

The unrelated educational institution

The name Shiksha Mandal also belongs to a century-old educational trust based in Wardha, Maharashtra, founded by Jamnalal Bajaj and influenced by the freedom movement and Mahatma Gandhi. It opened a school at Wardha in 1919, moved into higher education with a Commerce College in 1940, and now runs colleges of commerce, science, agriculture, engineering, and technology in Wardha and Nagpur; the nation's first education conference, presided over by Gandhi, was held there in 1937¹⁵. It has no connection to the web series beyond the shared name.

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026