On January 4, 2010, Roshan Lal, a resident of Indore, sent a note, written in Hindi, to the National Housing Bank, requesting it to look into housing bonds issued by two companies of the Lucknow-headquartered Sahara group, Sahara India Real Estate Corporation and Sahara Housing Investment Corporation. Being a chartered accountant, Lal wrote in the small note, he found that the bonds, bought by a large number of investors, were not issued according to the rules. The National Housing Bank did not have the wherewithal to investigate the allegation, so it forwarded the letter to the Securities and Exchange Board of India, or Sebi, the capital markets regulator. That note set in motion a chain of events that resulted in the Supreme Court ordering the two companies on August 31 to return the money they had raised through the bonds — Rs 24,029 crore — to the 29.6 million investors, along with interest (15 per cent per annum).