Today, as the protagonist in a Rs 500-crore cheating case, Nowhera Shaikh is in the custody of Mumbai police after she was apprehended in Hyderabad.
MUMBAI: She started out as a hawker selling vegetables alongside her mother in Tirupati when she was in her teens. Few would have known then that she would go on to form 17 companies which would boast of 2 lakh-plus investors across the southern and western states and have a combined turnover of over Rs 1,000 crore.
The turnaround in fortunes seems more dramatic when one considers all the stops in between: over the years, she acquired a degree in business management, started a madrassa for girls, and even formed a party to contest polls in Karnataka.
But Nowhera Shaikh's downfall was the outcome of the same expansion that brought her success. As the 45-year-old burqa-clad single mother spread her reach over a period of seven years using a Ponzi scheme - offering returns of 36-42% - her offices and agents in Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh drew in more and more investors; there was a whiff of a hawala scandal somewhere. By May 2018 Shaikh had begun defaulting on payments, eventually leading to mismanagement of funds, chaos and police complaints.
Today, as the protagonist in a Rs 500-crore cheating case, Shaikh is in the custody of Mumbai police after she was apprehended in Hyderabad. She was arrested by Mumbai police's economic offences wing (EOW) on October 25 on a complaint by an investor named Shane Elahi who faced a default. Over the past few days, national intelligence agencies have dropped in to discuss the case. "Most of her investors are from the Muslim community whom she promised an interest-free halal business," said an investigator.
The daughter of a cleric who led the namaz in a mosque near Tirupati, she is the oldest among five siblings. The class IX dropout graduated early from being a vegetable vendor in the town to one buying and selling used clothes and then venturing into trading in gold. That proved the turning point.
"She dropped out of school and studied Islamic education in a madrassa for a couple of years," said an investigator. "During this time, she came in contact with several women in her village. Shaikh told us that she began to sell them jewellery that she would buy from goldsmiths. Shaikh claimed that in 1997-98 she formed a women's group that invested in her business and she would share the profits with them regularly."
The scheme flourished. In 2008, her partners insisted they form a company to run the business on a larger scale. This was when she formed her first firm, Heera Gold, and got it registered in 2012 as a private limited company.
Next, Shaikh roped in her sister, Mubarak Jahan (39). Brother Ismail (42) too joined them as an employee. Later, she went on to form another 16 companies all starting with the name 'Heera' in a range of businesses, including food, retail, construction, travel and and jewellery. The group has offices in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and overseas in Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Oman and Kuwait, employing more than 500 in all. Shaikh told police she filed zero returns for 14 of the firms she set up, while for the other three she paid Rs 55 crore as income tax. So far, 50 bank accounts linked to her firms have been identified.
Her network had apparently expanded to Africa. She visited Ghana to strike a deal to import gold. She would buy raw gold from Ghana mines, she initially told police. Later, she allegedly changed her version and said she was sourcing the metal from two jewellers in Mumbai. The last major gold consignment she bought was for Rs 35 crore.
In 2007, Shaikh married one Sanaullah Qureshi alias Salman, who was in the real estate business. The couple had a daughter. The marriage ended in 2014. Shaikh told police that her husband felt threatened by her success and had begun squandering her wealth.
The only time she got into trouble was in August 2012, when Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi filed a complaint alleging that she had cheated investors. She was not arrested but in May 2014, sleuths busted a hawala gang in Hyderabad and seized Rs 84.7 lakh cash. Those held included two employees of Heera group.
Last November, Shaikh had launched a political party - All India Mahila Empowerment Party - at a five-star hotel in Delhi. Her symbol was a diamond. Several film and sports personalities attended the launch. Her party managed barely 0.3% vote share in the 2018 Karnataka assembly elections though she had fielded candidates for all 224 seats. The party lost everywhere. In May 2018, seven of her candidates filed a cheating case against her with Bengaluru police. Next, as her firms began to default on payments, irate investors began seeking help.
Mumbai police, which has been receiving complaints every day since the scam broke, has written to authorities concerned seeking to appoint forensic auditors who can help unravel the intricacies of the case.
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