Hyderabad Police move Supreme Cour against Nowhera Shaik’s bail

Hyderabad: The police has filed a special leave petition (SLP) in the Supreme Court against the Telangana High Court order granting conditional bail to Nowhera Shaik, managing director of the Heera Group, against whom multiple cases had been registered for allegedly defrauding investors to the tune of Rs 5,600 crore by collecting deposits.

The High Court had granted conditional bail to Nowhera Shaik and transferred the ongoing investigation into the cases from the state police to the New Delhi-headquartered Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) in December last year.

Sources told Deccan Chronicle that the SLP was filed mainly on two counts: Granting conditional bail to Nowhera Shaik, and transferring the case to the SFIO.

The contention of the state police is that SFIO does not have the mandate to investigate cases of this nature. Instead, the state police suggested that the Central Bureau of Investi-gation (CBI) would be the appropriate agency to deal with such cases which have national and international ramifications.

SFIO functions under the ministry of corporate affairs and is mandated to conduct multi-disciplinary investigations of major corporate frauds.

In their petition, the state police said that Nowhera Shaik was running a Ponzi-like scam by attracting huge deposits to the tune of Rs 5,600 crore from nearly two lakh people. The police said that Heera Group has close to 200 bank accounts through which the company was alleged to be carrying out shady details.

There were foreign currency deposits to the tune of Rs 250 crore and in all her business ventures, the company was said to be making profit of about 90 per cent.

“The CBI is the appropriate agency to handle the case of this magnitude and not the SFIO as it is a complex case having multiple dimensions. A thorough investigation by CBI can uncover many more aspects related to the case,” the state police said. It is learnt that more than 40 cases were registered against Shaik in different states.

During multiple interrogations by police of various states besides the Enforcement Directorate, Nowhera Shaik did not reveal anything about the alleged fraud. All through, investigators have been struggling to get more information of her properties abroad, particularly in the UAE and her bank accounts overseas.

In fact, though the Telangana state police was earlier mulling to hand over the case to CBI, the state government never formally wrote to the agency to take over the case, reportedly under pressure from some quarters.