By Abdul Bari Masoud

Hyderabad/New Delhi:  Finally the law catches up Dr Aalima Nowhera Shaikh, the chairperson of ponzy company Heera Group and president of the All India Mahila Empowerment Party (MEP) who allegedly duped hundreds of unsuspecting investors across the country.  Hyderabad Police on Tuesday arrested her after unrelenting protest by investors at the company’s headquarters and other cities. Her company collected hundreds of crores rupees since its inception but refused to return investors’ hard-earned money. Even she stopped ‘sharing profit’ with investors after her party MEP  had contested Karnataka assembly election in May this year and throughout the electioneering, MEP was accused of being the B-team of the BJP, and of contesting the polls to take away a share of Muslim votes off the Congress, and thereby help the Hindutva party.

There have been many cases registered against her and her company in Hyderabad, Bengaluru, and Mumbai and a look out notice has been also issued against her.  She was arrested today at noon at her swanky office in Hyderabad who tried to take political refuge by launching   a political outfit in order to help a communal party in the assembly polls. The protesting investors took a sigh of relief after Nowhera Shaikh’s arrest but they still skeptic about getting back their money. They had earlier protested against the delayed payments following a financial crunch faced by the company.Recently over 200 victims of Heera Gold held public protests in Hyderabad along with victims and investors from other parts of India and filed complaint against the group and its founder Nowhera Shaikh. After the elections, MEP’s own candidates filed criminal complaints against Nowhera Shaik, accusing her of cheating.

Hyderabad-based Shahbaz Ahmed Khan, who has been leading the fight against Heera Group, told Muslim Mirror that every day, he used to receive calls from panicky victims of Heera Gold from across the country seeking his help in recovering their investment.

There are many who had invested more than Rs1 crore in Heera Gold and are now facing difficulties he said and added that they are neither receiving interest nor getting the principal amount back.

The Heera Islamic Business Group or better known as Heera Gold claims to be a gold trading company with business all over the world. It has specifically targeted the Muslim community with the promise of high returns and constant references to ‘Allah’ to project itself as a devout and god-fearing organisation. Particularly, in the past four years, the lack of any enforcement action by investigation agencies has allowed this shadowy group to grow rapidly and diversify into diverse business and it has made crores of deposits in a very short period of time.

The group began its operations in 2010 and since then, claims to have created 25 legal entities in various business sectors, like gold trading, trading, textiles, jewellery, mineral water, granite, tours and travels, developers, electronics, Hajj and Umrah services among others. It also  claims to have its offices in Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Canada, China and Hong Kong. Of these, only 10 were found to be registered on Registrar of Companies (ROC), Hyderabad and only four are found to have filed their balance-sheets (FY12-13), which were being analyzed.

However, because of her powerful political links, the police were not reluctant to investigate the matter or taking action against Heera Gold, Shahbaz Khan said.  Nowhera Shaik has filed 17 cases against him for taking cudgel on behalf of victims.

SEBI has declared the Heera group as a ponzi scheme   which lures unsuspecting investors by offering them unusually high or above average returns without any of the associated risks.

The greed to make ‘easy’ money is so intense it sometimes overpowers their financial wisdom. They get attracted to flashy schemes, promises of impossible returns and weird business models of little-known companies. This is what happened with the investors of Heera group. Nowhera Shaikh’s arrest  has sparked panic among  those particularly NRIs who invested their hard-earned money  in this shadowy group.  An Indian who lives in Abu Dhabi said he is worried about the Dh500,000 he invested with Heera Gold’s Jumeirah Lake Towers office. Another investor who works in Dubai said he fears he had become an unwitting victim of an elaborate Ponzi scheme. “I lost Dh200,000. It was all I had. I am ruined,” he told Gulf News.