With the arrest of 9 persons, police on Saturday claimed of busting an international counterfeit currency gang that used to smuggle fake currency to India from Bangladesh.
Police have also seized fake currency of Rs 3.26 lakh in denomination of Rs 500 notes.
“The currency notes that were sized during our investigation are of high printing quality and seemed of having printed in one machine. Surprisingly the safety standards were also copied in the counterfeit currency and are generally not easy to differentiate at first glance,” Inspector General of Police (IGP) Surguja, Himanshu Gupta said.
The notes were printed from very high-resolution printer and it looked like currency printer can alone do the job, he added.
The persons held in connection with the case were identified as Sahabuddin Shekh alias Abdul Rehman (32), Dhanpati Gond (29), Vahid Ali Iraqi (29), Mata Prasad (35) all four residents of resident of Sanawal Balrampur. Deepka Kumar alias Guddu (22), Hareram Choudhary (25) native of Rohtas Bihar, Deepak Kajaria (56) of Dhanbad Jharkhand, Mukul Haque alias Mukul Sekh (23) and Zia-ul-Haque (32) native of Malda West Bengal.
Detailing about the case, he said that Sahabuddin was the first person to be nabbed after he was caught trying to purchase some item through counterfeit currency at Kudargarh mela on April 20.
later on, based on inputs provided by Sahabuddin and pieces of evidence gathered during investigation rests of the persons were arrested from Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Assam the IGP said.
“Mukul Haque and Zia-ul-Haque used to travel Bangladesh illegally and from there they procured counterfeit notes. There they also received fake currency from Pakistan and Nepal,” the IGP detailed.
Deepak Kajaria, according to the IGP acted as a central distributor who was linked with Deepak Choudhary who in-turn passed the fake currency to Surguja region.