Patna, Sept. 25: Police have busted a gang involved in the printing and circulation of counterfeit currency notes, stamps, stamp papers and financial instruments and recovered fake documents worth Rs 100 crore, the biggest such catch in the state.
Among the documents are fake National Savings Certificates (NSCs) and Kisan Vikas Patras (KVPs).
As many as 17 persons were arrested during the raids carried out yesterday night and this morning across the city. Patna senior superintendent of police Manu Maharaj said the gang had spread its tentacles beyond Bihar’s borders.
The police said the arrested men had revealed during interrogation that they had already pumped in fake currency notes amounting to lakhs of rupees in the Patna market.
“We received information on Tuesday night that fake non-judicial stamps, court stamps etc had been kept at Flat Number 204 of Abhay Apartment in Patliputra. A team under Patna city SP Jayant Kant raided the flat. Four persons, including the mastermind Ranjit Kumar, were nabbed and stamp papers worth Rs 2 crore were recovered. These stamp papers were of the denomination of Rs 10, Rs 100, Rs 200, Rs 500, Rs 750 and Rs 20,000,” Maharaj said.
The four persons provided information about another such “branch” of the gang. “The residence of one Sanjay Rai, who lives in Khemnichak, was raided and the police recovered fake currency notes, stamp papers, fake stamps, computers, printing machines, cutting machines, dyes used for printing, non-judicial stamp papers, printing blocks to make fake security threads, many KVPs and NSCs etc. Here, we arrested seven more persons,” Maharaj said.
Mastermind Kumar had by then spilled the beans on yet another den — Flat 504 of Raghu Hari Apartment, also at Patliputra. The raids there yielded fake papers and notes worth more than Rs 5 crore. Five persons were arrested.
The final raid was carried out early this morning on the residence of one Arjun Rai in Bahadurpur. Here too, the haul was worth crores of rupees. “This is easily the biggest catch ever made by the state police,” Maharaj said.
The fake NSCs and KVPs were used by contractors as security deposit while submitting bids for tenders.
