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The sleuths of the Anti-Terrorists Squad (ATS) on Wednesday arrested the kingpin of fake Indian currency notes racket (FICN) supplying counterfeit notes to his conduits in Uttar Pradesh.
The arrested accused, identified as Sadar Ali, is a resident of Malda Town in West Bengal and was carrying a cash reward of Rs 25,000 on his arrest. He was earlier arrested by Murshidabad police in West Bengal in 2010 and fake currency of over Rs 4 lakh was recovered from him.
According to an official communiqué of the ATS released here on Thursday evening, they arrested two persons -- Thesin Khan and Waseem Khan -- on November 1 last year from whom counterfeit notes of Rs 5.97 lakh were recovered. The ATS registered a case and during interrogation, it was revealed that the high quality FICN were brought by the accused from Malda Town by Sadar Ali, who was active in the trade along with his wife Mumtaz. The cops named the couple as `wanted' and announced a cash reward of Rs 25,000 on arrest of each of the accused.
The ATS claimed that acting on a tip-off, the sleuths arrested Sardar from Noida on Wednesday night. During interrogation, he disclosed to have pumped FICN mainly in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and in the National Capital Region. Further interrogations are on with him in this regard.
It may be mentioned that on Tuesday also, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) had arrested one Babloo, a resident of Sitapur and a key member of the fake Indian currency notes racket from Lucknow. Babloo's role had surfaced in the case after the arrest of three people by UP's Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) on November 25, 2019 when they unearthed the fake Indian currency notes racket. The ATS had seized FICN of Rs 1.79 lakh from the three accused identified as Phulchand, Aminul Islam and Nasiba Khatoon.
The NIA officials said the three were arrested near Itaunja toll plaza on Lucknow-Sitapur highway and the case was initially registered at the ATS police station in Gomti Nagar, Lucknow. Later, the NIA took over the case on January 20, 2020 and filed a charge sheet against the three accused in this case.
Reports said that since then the NIA teams were in search of Babloo as the investigation in the case revealed that he was engaged in smuggling of high quality FICN and was in regular telephonic contact with the charge-sheeted accused Aminul Islam and Phulchand. The investigation revealed that the accused had received the high quality FICN from Malda, West Bengal and had circulated and supplied them to various persons in different parts of Uttar Pradesh.