MUMBAI: She started out as a hawker selling vegetables alongside her mother in the southern city of Tirupati when she was in her teens. Few would have known then that the now 45-year-old burqa-clad, single mother 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 elections in Kar nataka.But Nowhera Shaikh’s downfall was the outcome of the same expansion that brought her success. As she 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 on Mumbai police to discuss the case. “Most of her investors are from the Muslim community whom she promised an “interest-free halal business,” said an investigator.Read the story in Bengali