As Friday was the very last day for Sahara group companies to refund Rs 24,000 crore to investors, the assets of the two companies, viz. Sahara India Real Estate Corp Ltd
(SIRECL) and Sahara Housing Investment Corp Ltd (SHICL), could be attached or seized anytime by market regulator SEBI.

On August 31, the Supreme Court had ruled that if the group failed to meet the repayment deadline of November 30, the regulator could move to seize its assets to allow complete refund of money to the investors.

In an appeal filed through their advocate Gaurav Kejriwal, the two companies said, "It is clear that Sebi is taking steps towards attachment of assets/accounts on the basis that the appellants are in non-compliance of the August 31 judgment ."

On Friday, the Sahara Group suffered a big blow when the Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT) declined to entertain its plea that sought the tribunal's Registrar to accept a pay order of Rs 5,120 crore.

The tribunal turned down the plea saying the process was already proceeding as directed by the Supreme Court of India. It may be noted here that the proposed pay order of Rs
5,120 crore was around a third of the Rs 17,400 crore that the apex court has ordered it to return to three crore investors.

SIRECL and SHICL had collected the money from investors by selling optionally fully convertible debentures (OFCDs) in violation of securities norms.