Officials of the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Crime Branch in Delhi and police personnel from various States have been on the lookout for Sharma for nearly a month. And when the application for interim bail was heard in Supreme Court on May 7, there was no police official or lawyer to oppose it.

Alok Kumar, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) in charge of the EOW, said they did not even know when the appeal for interim bail was heard. ``No notice was served on us. We were not present during the proceedings,'' he said. Sharma, with a liability of Rs 500 crore -- mainly from small investors all over the country -- was given time to approach the court for relief, said senior advocate D D Thakur, who represented him. He added that in the meantime, they were trying to obtain bailfrom various courts, including the Allahabad and Delhi High Courts. The EOW chief said they would oppose the bail plea.

Sharma and the other Board of Directors have been in hiding ever since the scam broke out last month. The Kuber group comprised nine companies, prominent among them the Kuber Mutual Benefits Limited, Kuber Planters, Kuber Auto General Finance and Kuber Builders. They had 400 branch offices, spread all over the country. There were as many as 300 schemes in which small investors put their money, lured by the attractive interest offers.The Kuber group was pulled up by the High Court in October 1998, for their misleading advertisements and claims that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had given them a ``clean chit.''

Several harried investors and agents have been camping in Delhi over the last six months. All of them have given up hope of recovering their money.