HYDERABAD: Cyberabad police investigating the cases registered against Heera Group’s Managing Director and the founder of All India Mahila Empowerment Party Nowhera Shaik have found that she had floated 15 companies, whose turnover — from the time the first company was launched in 2010 till mid 2018 — was Rs 5,600 crore.
Though 15 companies are shown on records, only four of them — Heera Gold Exim, Heera Textiles, Heera Retail and Heera Foodex — were in operation, found police.
Police in the chargesheet filed a few days ago, in connection with the case registered at Kukatpally police station, told the court that Nowhera has registered all the companies with Registrar of Companies (RoC), but none of them had requisite permissions from regulatory bodies like RBI and SEBI.
No proof of source:
Meanwhile, police have written to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) to inquire into the irregularities occurred in Heera Group of companies.
During the investigation, police found that Nowhera Shaik had collected money from more than 2.75 lakh investors across the country, promising them good returns through investments in gold businesses. She even paid returns to some of them, but there is no proof or record of the source of the group’s income. Though she claimed of investments in gold businesses, there are no records to support the claim, police found.
Inquiries also revealed that though all firms should hold meetings with the board of directors at regular intervals and submit meeting minutes to RoC, it was not followed, keeping the RoC completely clueless about the activities and decisions of the companies.
First venture:
Nowhera launched her first company at Chittoor in Andhra Pradesh in 2010 with around 50 employees and collected investments from public with the promise of providing good returns. After finding success with her first venture, she started spreading out her network to different parts of Andhra Pradesh, neighbouring Telangana, Karnataka, Maharashtra and other States.
Inquiries also revealed that she had paid returns to group investors till May 2018, but stopped after that, forcing investors to approach police and as many as 22 cases were registered against her and group promoters in different parts of the country under charges of cheating, diversion of investors’ funds and several other sections. After Kukatpally police arrested her in January 2019, police from Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Mumbai also interrogated her.
Eleven victims who were allegedly cheated by Heera Group to the tune of Rs 57 lakh lodged complaints with Kukatpally police. Kukatpally police during her arrest, seized hard disk of 4TB capacity, documents from her Banjara Hills residence and companies. During the investigation, the Cyberabad police have also freezed 164 bank accounts.