“Sir, she was like family. Always smiling, calling us ‘bhaiya’ and ‘didi’, promising double returns. We even brought more people in because we trusted her.”
That’s what one of the investors who invested in Arbuda Ponzi scheme said when the police finally caught up with Nisha Agrawal, the woman who had disappeared into thin air for almost eight years, leaving behind a trail of shattered savings and broken trust.
This wasn’t some shady back-alley racket. This was a full-fledged operation, run through nearly 50 branches of the Arbuda Credit Cooperative Society, spread across Gujarat and Rajasthan.
And for a long time, it looked… legit.
The Illusion of Security
It started like most cooperative scams do: with a smile and a promise. Nisha, along with her husband Rakesh Agrawal and his second wife Asha, ran Arbuda as if it were a family-run mission to make the middle class richer.
“We’re offering better returns than banks,” she would say at investor meetings.
“And your money stays local, helping others, too. This is community growth.”
It sounded noble. It looked well-structured. They had paperwork, registration numbers, staff,and even customer support. To the average investor, this wasn’t a scam—it was an opportunity.
People poured their life savings. ₹2 lakh, ₹5 lakh, even ₹15 lakh from small-town businessmen, pensioners, housewives. The money rolled in… and kept rolling in.
And Then, One Day, It All Went Quiet
The year was 2016, and the country was grappling with demonetization.
But for Arbuda’s investors, something more worrying happened.
“The cheques stopped clearing.”
“The office phones went dead.”
“Their main branch just… vanished.”
People rushed to the police. A trail of FIRs began stacking up—fraud, cheating, misappropriation.
The scheme, as it turned out, was just another fake investment setup of the Arbuda Ponzi scheme. Money from new investors was being used to pay off older ones.
A house of cards, brought down not by the police, but by its weight.
Rakesh surrendered in Mount Abu in 2017. He blamed “demonetization.” But Nisha? She disappeared.
A Fugitive for 8 Years
She changed homes, names, and even her entire appearance.
For almost eight years, she evaded arrest, slipping through cities and villages like a ghost. All the while, over 21 cases were being filed against her. She was declared absconding in six of them.
And then, one quiet morning in April 2025, the police finally closed in.
The Trap That Caught Her
Inspector Janaksinh Devda and his team in Kapadwanj town police had been tracking faint leads when they noticed a pattern: a woman working as a domestic help in Ahmedabad’s Naranpura seemed to have frequent contact with someone who matched Nisha’s old profile.
So they did something unusual.
They posed as job seekers. They told the woman they had been “sent by Nisha aunty.” It worked.
She led them to a flat.
When the officers knocked, Nisha opened the door. She didn’t scream or run. She just looked tired.
“It’s over, isn’t it?” she reportedly muttered as they cuffed her.
What This Scam Really Costs
The Arbuda Ponzi Scheme wasn’t just a ₹50 crore financial crime. It was a crime of emotion. Of trust. Of using language and family values to disarm people.
No one invests in a cooperative society expecting to get rich. They do it because someone they trust, maybe a relative or a community leader, says it’s safe.
The Arbuda scam preyed on that trust.
And even now, years later, most investors haven’t seen a single rupee returned.
Final Thoughts
The arrest of Nisha Agrawal doesn’t mean justice is done. It just means accountability has finally caught up.
But here’s the real question:
- Why did it take eight years to arrest a woman who stole from hundreds?
- Why did the system let her vanish in the first place?
There’s a lesson here for regulators, for investors, and for anyone who thinks “a little extra return” is worth bypassing paperwork and due diligence.
Because when something feels too safe and too profitable, it usually is—until one day, it isn’t.
In case you suspect any of the investment schemes like this and have fallen victim to such fake promises, take the right action now. Register with us and get assistance in filing and reporting the fraud.
