In August, the Supreme Court of India ruled that finance schemes run by two Sahara companies were illegal and ordered the companies to repay the collected money plus interest, to the tune of $4.5 billion, to as many as thirty million investors.

The two unlisted companies of Sahara, which is best known through its lead sponsorship of the Indian cricket team, had interests in several field ranging across media, entertainment, finance and housing. These companies’ clients sold investment products to mostly poor people in villages and small towns in amounts as small as Rs 2 per day.

While critics argued that Sahara's investment products lacked transparency as they were designed to circumvent financial regulators’ supervision, many investors claimed that they received good returns for the deposits they made.

Forty-year-old Chaudhary of Khalilabad town, in Sant Kabir Nagar district of Uttar Pradesh, said, "Banks take eight years to pay what I get from Sahara in five years.”

Like numerous Sahara customers interviewed around two weeks afterwards, Chaudhary had not heard of the apex court’s ruling.

When contacted, Sahara’s chief Subrata Roy Sahara claimed that the companies helps small investors outside the banking system, and added that Sahara agents motivated people to invest money for great returns who would otherwise spend their money on gambling and liquor.

But, the apex court ruled that the companies raised money by "dubious" means. Moreover, Sahara's huge size and enormous spending power have raised questions over how the company operates.