To make Heera Group helpless,
Dr. Nowhera Sheikh’s personal legal advisor arrested
New Delhi / Hyderabad (Report: Matiur Rehman Aziz) Soon after the re-arrest of Heera Group of Companies Chairperson and CEO, Dr. Nowhera Sheikh, her personal legal advisor Nazanin Abida was also arrested. This move has further strengthened the suspicions against the Enforcement Directorate (ED) Hyderabad Zonal Office that the department does not have solid evidence against Heera Group. The background and history of the case show that the ED Hyderabad Zonal Office has been investigating the Heera Group of Companies since 2018. In 2021, Dr. Nowhera Sheikh had been granted bail by the court. The Supreme Court had expressed its opinion in this case that Dr. Nowhera Sheikh and her company were being targeted on the basis of political vendetta. Now in June 2026, instead of taking action on the properties awarded by the court, the ED has announced an arbitrary auction of 50 properties on the MSTC website. Experts and concerned quarters say that these steps indicate the legal weakness of the ED and the lack of evidence. At the time of the arrest of Dr. Nowhera Sheikh in 2018, the ED pasted attachment orders on all the properties of the company, locked the offices and seized all the data including hard disks from the corporate head office. At that time, the statements of Hyderabad Police Commissioner Anjani Kumar also caused controversy. The root of these actions is found in the FIR registered by Asad Owaisi in 2012, in which Owaisi later faced defeat in the court and a defamation case of Rs 100 crore was also filed against him. Now in 2026, the re-arrests and property proceedings are being carried out in almost the same manner. Nazanin Abida’s arrest is being described as clear evidence of ED’s helplessness. Despite the passage of 8 years, the ED has not been able to present any concrete evidence against the company. According to experts, this is a panic that is taking the form of an attempt to push the case forward by force, especially when the courts are on summer vacation. During the ED’s 2018 operations, several valuable properties of the Heera Group were illegally occupied by the land mafia. Some prominent examples are, Toli Chowki, SA Colony, expensive lands were occupied by Syed Akhtar of SA Builders and his son-in-law Abdul Rahim and built multi-storey buildings. A luxury bungalow in Banjara Hills was occupied by film producer Bandla Ganesh. And a bungalow in Jebel Ali Hills was occupied by Syed Moinuddin (President of Endowment Affairs). There are dozens of other examples of such illegal occupations. It is alleged that the ED is not taking any action against these illegal occupation mafias, on the contrary, it is doing its own arbitrariness by acquiring more properties of the Hera Group from the court and announcing the auction of 50 properties at MSTC. Now the question arises that does the ED really not have solid evidence? Is political pressure or external forces behind this action? Why are the mafia’s occupation of properties being ignored while the company’s properties are being targeted? These questions are becoming more intense with time. The Hera Group case is not only the story of a business entity but has also become a mirror of justice, evidence-based action and allegations of political vendetta. If any answer comes out from the ED, the truth of the case may become clearer. Currently, 8 years of investigation, arrests, arbitrary auction of properties and silence on illegal occupations by the mafia, all together are raising serious questions in the minds of the public.
Time will tell if there is any power behind the new arrest operations being carried out by the Enforcement Directorate on the Heera Group of Companies, but it is clear that at the time of the arrest of Dr. Nowhera Sheikh in 2018, not only had the Heera Group properties been taken over by Hyderabadi land mafias, but a large area of the most expensive land in Toli Chowki SA Colony was occupied by SA Builder Syed Akhtar and his son-in-law Abdul Rahim and built a multi-story building. On the other hand, a film producer named Bandla Ganesh occupied an expensive bungalow in Banjara Hills, and a bungalow in Jebel Ali Hills was occupied by Syed Moinuddin, the president of Waqf Affairs. These are a few of the encroachments that were named, but there are dozens of illegal encroachments that are yet to be processed amid ED’s attachment of encroachments and occupations. But despite all this, the ED kept demanding more properties from the court. The court gave 16 properties, but the ED, in its arbitrary manner, announced 50 more properties on MSTC, further strengthening the public’s suspicions that the Enforcement Directorate Hyderabad Zonal Office is only exerting its power on the Hera Group, while on the other hand, it is turning a blind eye to the illegal encroachments of the land mafia.
