In a major breakthrough, the Sundargarh police on Saturday busted a fake dollar-rupee exchange racket here by arresting four persons for allegedly taking Rs 20,000 from a man in exchange of ‘fake’ dollar notes.
According to police sources, two males and two females were staying in a rented house in Ainthapali area in Sambalpur district. Though the four were selling clothes on roadsides, they were allegedly finding people having interest for American dollar.
While three of them were selling clothes on the roadside in the town, One Dolamani Mahanada, a resident of Ratnapur of the district, came to their temporary stall. Meanwhile, the four could know that Mahananda was on his way to deposit Rs 20,000 in his bank account.
Initiating friendly talks, one of the three told Dolamani that they have one thousand dollar which they want to exchange for rupee at a very minimum rate. During talks, they informed that one thousand dollar can make more than Rs 60,000 while exchanged in any commercial bank. As we don’t have bank account here, we are unable to do it and we barely need money, the four reportedly told Dalamani.
Attracted by the offer, greedy Dolamani took the bundle form the cloth-sellers and gave them the whole Rs 20,000. But to his bad luck, when he opened the bundle at a secluded place, he found that each bundle had two dollar notes-one each on top and bottom- and in the middle were pieces of dollar-size plain paper only.
Baffled Dalamani rushed to the cloth-sellers but did not find them. After searching for the trio for some hours, Dalamani could find them fooling two other youths of Jharsuguda, at a different location in the twon. They immediately nabbed them and handed over to the police.
The police also recovered Rs 20,000 from one of them, identified as Jahangir Alam (48). Police also seized a 20 dollar note and two 1 dollar notes from him. During interrogation, Jahangir told police that they were residing in rented house at Ainthapali area in Sambalpur.
A police team went to Sambalpur and arrested another three of his associates. The other three arrested persons have been identified as Md Yaseem(24), Fatima Begum(34) and Rahima Begum(21). Jahangir and Fatima and Yaseem and Rahima are two couples belonging to West Bengal’s 24 Paragana. “We have arrested the four accused under IPC section 420 and 34. They have been forwarded to court on Saturday evening,” said B Kanhar, IIC lo Sundargarh town police station.
