HYDERABAD: A public interest litigation petition was filed in the High Court seeking direction to the Telangana government to order a CBI probe into Heera group scam involving Rs 50,000 crore and returning depositors’ amounts collected by Heera group of companies with Nowhera Shaik as its managing director and chief executive officer.
Petitioner ‘The Heera Group Victims’ Association’, represented by its president Shahbaz Ahmed Khan of Hyderabad, submitted that the Heera group and its subsidiary companies had indulged in multi-crore investment fraud by collecting crores of rupees from the public with a promise of high monthly returns. Initially, the companies have given returns for a few months and subsequently stopped making payments. Heera group has 74 branches across the country and abroad and engaged 430 marketing agents to collect deposits from the investors.
The companies managing director and CEO has terror links with outfits like ISIS. Even the Pakistani cleric Tauseefur Rehman, belonging to ISIS, had praised Nowhera Shaikh which shows that she has terror links. The number of investors from Dubai, UK, USA, India stands at around three lakh though the police has put the figure at about 1.75 lakh, it added.
The petitioner said that the registration of case by the police was just an eyewash as nothing much was done in the case till date. A proper investigation into the matter was required to unearth the facts. There was a need for a thorough probe into the scam by CBI since money laundering was also involved in it.
At present, the police were not in a position to investigate the matter and the case requires probe by the skilled officers as the money collected by the group of companies was invested in several other countries.
State chief secretary, principal secretary to home, DGP, Union cabinet secretary, ministry of finance, CBI director, Nowhera Shaik and her 17 companies were named as the respondents.