by PAUL BRACCHI

Last updated at 22:46 16 February 2007

How many people does it take to make an outfit for Shilpa Shetty? The answer is 40.

A magnificent hand-embroidered tunic created by the Indian version of Stella McCartney is being painstakingly stitched by a team of helpers.

It will be ready in time for Shilpa's date with the Queen next month. Such occasions are becoming commonplace for her: last week, an audience with Tony Blair, now an invitation to celebrate Commonwealth Day with Her Majesty.

A service at Westminster Abbey will be followed by a reception for select dignitaries (of which the 31-year-old actress is one).

There are surely times when Shilpa must think she is starring in her own Bollywood blockbuster. Could there be a more unbelievable script - and fairy-tale finale - than the story of the Celebrity Big Brother winner?

She was called "Shilpa Poppadom" and the "Indian" in the Big Brother house. By the time she emerged, Jade Goody had become a pariah, pop star Jo O'Meara was on suicide watch, model Danielle Lloyd had been ditched by her soccer star boyfriend, and Shilpa, according to the Bombay Times, was the "most recognised Indian face in the world".

She has received more than 200 offers of work - commercials, modelling, presenting, book deals, film roles, even a part in Andrew Lloyd Webber's revival of West End musical Bombay Dreams - totalling £10 million.

During a shopping spree last week, in between appearing on breakfast TV and Richard & Judy - for which she was paid handsomely - she blew £30,000 on Boodles earrings, a Vivienne Westwood jacket and Gina shoes.

Days earlier, it was £4,000 in four hours on jewellery, a coat, six pairs of high heels, a designer handbag and Victoria Beckham jeans. But who would wish, or dare, to criticise Shilpa in the wake of her near beatification?

Today, her younger sister gives an interview to Weekend magazine, but there is another side to the family's life back home in Bombay they would prefer people not to know.

Shilpa's parents have been charged with extortion; there have been accusations of exploiting factory workers and money-grabbing behaviour; an embittered wife blames Shilpa for the break-up of her marriage; and the agent who claims he was dumped the moment she won Big Brother has called in the lawyers.

They say Bombay, the home of Bollywood, is a city of extremes where poverty and wealth, dirt and diamonds, sit side by side.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the Andheri West district. The roads, many dug up and strewn with rubble, are lined with rundown and luxury apartments.

The Shettys - Shilpa, her sister Shamita, 28, and their parents, Surendra and Sunanda - live in a six-bedroom apartment worth more than £900,000.

There are two cooks - who are given instructions via an intercom - two home helps, three chauffeurs and a 'boy' who runs errands, serves tea and uses an umbrella to shade Shilpa from the sun. Security guards man the gated entrance.

Who would guess from their lifestyle that her parents are on bail for allegedly hiring gangsters to intimidate a businessman who is said to have owed Shilpa £30,000 for taking part in a TV advertising campaign to promote his fashion company?

"I've been framed," Mr Shetty insisted, when we contacted him on his mobile phone. "Do you think I am capable of doing what I am accused of?"

The businessman went to the authorities after he began receiving threatening calls in 2003.

The Shettys were put under surveillance and the police secretly taped phone conversations between the businessman, Shilpa's parents and the criminals they are accused of hiring.

Transcripts have been made public - among the most incriminating is the following exchange:

Gangster one: "This is about the Shilpa Shetty matter."

Businessman: "What matter? Who is speaking?"

(Gangster one passes the phone to his superior).

Mafia boss: "You have to pay." Businessman: "But I don't owe them anything."

Mafia boss: "I have told you - you have to give the money."

Gangster one: "We have already received an advance to get the money from you. If you do not pay up, we will kill you."

Businessman: "How will I know you are Shetty's man?"

Gangster one: "I will give you a number. Speak to them."

(The businessman then rings the number and speaks to Mr and Mrs Shetty.)

Businessman: "We are both businessmen. This tactic is not good. Those people do not deal properly."

Mr Shetty: "You will have to pay up. Talk to Sunanda."

Businessman: "He (the mafia boss) is harassing me. Please stop him."

Mrs Shetty: "Give us the money, the telephone calls will stop."

Shortly after this conversation, Mrs and Mrs Shetty were arrested and charged with extortion. The case is due before the courts again later this year, and if convicted the couple could be jailed for up to seven years.

So what do we know about the unsavoury characters on the police tape? Our inquiries took us to Inspector Pradeep Sharma, India's Dirty Harry, who has gunned down 87 gangsters, according to the framed Time magazine article from 2003 above his desk.

Sharma, a member of the elite Criminal Intelligence Unit, points out the figure is out of date: his bloody tally has risen to 110.

For anyone tempted to think he is exaggerating, a loaded .38 revolver in his drawer and an AK 47 machine gun and 9mm carbine in a holdall suggest otherwise.

Sharma knows the criminals linked to the Shettys. One of the men on the tape ('Gangster one') is Uday Shetty - not a relative, but a member of the same caste.

He is at large, but his boss, Fazal-ur-Rahman, is in custody in Delhi on suspicion of murder, kidnapping and extortion.

"A call from Rahman or someone in his gang would terrify anyone," said a journalist who reports on the Bombay underworld.

Rahman was a one-time associate of a certain Dawood Ibrahim, who has a history of backing terror organisations, has close links to Osama Bin Laden and is accused of masterminding bomb attacks in the commercial centre of Bombay in 1993 which left 200 dead.

The extortion case is not the only controversy to embroil the Shettys. In the dusty, chaotic northern suburbs of Ambernath - a 21/2-hour drive in heavy traffic from the centre of Bombay - is the Esco factory which produces aluminium bottle caps for the pharmaceutical industry.

The Shettys, who run the plant, along with two others in the city, employ 18 people there.

When we spoke to Mr Shetty on his mobile, he said he treated the workers "like his own children".

The manager was happy to let us talk to the factory staff. "Everyone is very happy," he said. So they seemed (especially with the boss present).

But a report filed at the Judicial Magistrate's Court tells a different story. Investigators from the Labour Commissioner's office say women workers are being paid just 86 rupees - £1 a day - for an eight-hour shift. The minimum wage is 110 rupees.

One employee, who did not wish to be named, claimed she was paid even less. "I work for 12 hours, but get paid only 45 rupees (50p). And if a male worker is absent, female workers are made to lift and operate heavy machinery."

The Shettys stand accused of running a sweat shop. Shilpa is not involved in the running of the factory, but is a director and has been named on the charge sheet. The authorities claim the family has failed to reply to correspondence and could be arrested. If found guilty of violating labour laws, they could face hefty fines.

But what of Shilpa's private life? In a recent interview, she said: "I don't drink and always have to be in by 2am.

"So now and then I plead with dad and say, 'But the party does not even start until 11pm.' That sometimes softens him up."

There is no doubt she is ruled by her parents, especially her domineering mother, Sunanda, but you do not have to be in Bombay long to discover the saintly Shilpa image she enjoys in Britain is a far cry from the way she's seen at home.

We have been told by a police source that next to the swimming pool at the home of an Indian tycoon is a life-size statue of a naked Shilpa. As to whether she posed for this work of art, our contact could not say.

There have been scandals, both on and off screen. The most embarrassing - and potentially damaging - is her relationship with Bollywood director Anubhav Sinha. They are said to have become "close" on the set of his thriller Dus in Canada in 2005.

When the director returned to India, he left his wife Ratna; they had been married for 12 years.

Everyone associated with Shilpa, including her father, denies she and Sinha had an affair. "It's bull****. I know my own daughter," he said.

But according to a veteran Bollywood correspondent, it was "an open secret and everyone knew about it".

If they didn't before, they certainly do now. This week, Ratna broke her silence in an interview with the Bombay newspaper DNA. The headline read: "Ratna Sinha erupts against her director husband Anubhav and his 'good friend' Shilpa Shetty."

"Anubhav and I had the perfect marriage, until a year and a half ago," said Ratna, who does not refer to Shilpa by name in the interview.

"We had no problems whatsoever, but he suddenly left one day.

"I do not want to comment on their affair, but I am told they are good friends. They are both old and wise enough to make their own decisions. Anubhav knows the repercussions he will face for the choices he is making."

She said the marriage break-up and the intense media interest in the story has had a terrible effect on their young son, Shlok.

"He wakes up at 3am and cries out. He cannot go to school because people ask him where his father is."

Mrs Sinha spoke out, says a close friend, because "she wants people in Britain to know Shilpa isn't all she claims to be".

Nor is it the first time Shilpa has fallen for a man on set, according to Dharmesh Darshan, who gave a 24-year-old Shilpa her big break in his romantic hit Dhadkan (Heartbeat).

The film ran non-stop for 25 weeks in cinemas in India. An award proudly on show in Darshan's home is in the shape of a heart, with Shilpa's face in the middle and pictures of her two leading men on either side.

One of them is Akshay Kumar, with whom Shilpa had an ill-fated love affair which, says the director, began on location in Venice.

They were expected to marry, but halfway through filming, they split up.

Darshan let slip a number of intriguing details about Shilpa. Back then, the "hottest body in Bollywood" was "too buxom" for his liking, so he insisted she went on a diet. "I wanted her to be more elegant," he says.

Her hair was too "big" (it was straightened), her make-up "too loud" (it was toned down) and her nose "too flat" (she was given a new one by a plastic surgeon).

In fact, she had not one, but two nose jobs. "I didn't like the results of the first one," said Darshan. The makeover obviously worked: Shilpa became a star.

At that time, Shilpa's formidable mother Sunanda called Big Brother "one of the most unpleasant events I have encountered on television". But that was before the money started to roll in. Not only has she become Shilpa's business manager, she also has power of attorney over her assets.

"She is 100 per cent running the whole show," said someone close to the family. "She won't let Shilpa do anything without her.

"Shilpa has absolutely no say in anything, and it's all about money. If there is no money in it, then she is just not interested."

This attitude is summed up by her response to a request for Shilpa to appear on BBC1's Question Time.

"Shilpa would have been happy to do it," said another source. But her mother's only concern was: "Does she get paid?" Shilpa didn't go on Question Time.

None of this will come as a surprise to Bobby Khan, a Bollywood film-maker and promoter who has known Shilpa for 12 years. He was instrumental in getting her the Big Brother contract.

"Endemol [the producers] came to me last year," says Mr Khan. "I convinced them to choose Shilpa, even though they wanted a bigger Bollywood star.

"I came with her to Britain. The night before she went into the house, we talked about all the work we would do together after she came out and how this would be good for both of us."

Instead, Mr Khan, who has now returned to Bombay, was left with the bill for his trip - £15,000 - and little else; not even so much as "Thank you, Bobby".

"Since winning, Shilpa has not contacted me and refuses to take my calls," he said.

"I've thought long and hard about this and I feel taking legal action is my only option."

Today, Shilpa is represented by Max Clifford, who has spent his life dealing with potentially damaging allegations about his clients. He must have thought it would be different with Shilpa.

"I have spoken to Shilpa and her mother at length and they utterly refute all the accusations," he says. "They told me there are a lot of people, here and in India, who are jealous of Shilpa."

On a fleeting return to Bombay last weekend, Shilpa and her family prayed at a temple devoted to Ganesha, the Indian elephant god of success.

No one would begrudge Shilpa her good fortune. But 'St Shilpa'? Perhaps not.