Death would have been better for me, says a depositor

It looks like there is a lot to the Nowhera Shaik money circulation cheating case that has not surfaced yet. The money trail is far from restricted to the Telugu States and Maharashtra, with victims coming out from as far as Jammu and Kashmir in the north to Kerala in the south.

The Hindu spoke to a host of victims, some of whom hail from Darjeeling, Srinagar and Jamnagar in Gujarat. Most of these fell for Shaik’s slogan, ‘interest-free world’, interest being a major sin in Islam. The majority of the victims of her alleged cheating are Muslims, and many of them resided in the Middle East.

“I sold all my jewellery to invest in this group, because I was promised great returns, to the tune of almost double the amount of my investment, and that too in just 15 months. I lost everything now,” said Sakeena Parveen, a home-maker from Darjeeling, who invested ₹7 lakh in the Heera Gold and Heera Textile. She wanted to use the money for providing higher education to her son, outside Darjeeling.

Relatives’ advice

Residing thousands of kilometres away, Ikramullah has a similar tale to tell. Hailing from Ladakh, he settled in Srinagar in the late 90s, and retired only about a year ago. Relatives from Sharjah (UAE) and Doha (Qatar) advised him to invest in Heera Group, as they had invested and got some good returns.

It is a much better option than to invest in banks, he was told. “I was sceptical in the beginning, so I invested in instalments. Over 11 months, I invested ₹24.5 lakh, which was all I had from my retirement corpus. All of it has gone down the drain, and I feel that death would have been better for me,” said Ikramullah over the phone.

Ironically, before Ikramullah realised that he was being duped, he persuaded his siblings and relatives to invest in Heera Group, and together they pooled in about ₹1 crore, all of which has disappeared.

Nearly 1,900 km from Srinagar stays a single mother in Jamnagar of Gujarat who has invested ₹ 2.50 lakh of her savings from the zakat (donations during Ramzam) she earned. “I’m the only person from Gujarat who has invested money in that fraud company. I have to take care of my bed-ridden parents and two small children,” said Asma Younus Jiva, a domestic help, who lost her husband 10 years ago.

There are hundreds of such stories and several of those duped are reluctant to speak up, as they hold on to the hope of getting their money back if they side with Heera Group.

Ms Shaik, who is currently lodged in a prison in Maharashtra, reportedly told the police that the group had more than 2 lakh depositors with an annual turnover of nearly ₹ 1,000 crore, but declined to furnish details.