A policeman with seized negative prints at Jalukbari police station on Wednesday. Picture by Eastern Projections

Aug. 29: A retired postmaster, a schoolteacher under suspension and five others had been “minting” money out of pieces of paper right in the heart of the city, until police swooped down on them in the wee hours of the morning today.

Jalukbari police busted a fake currency racket with the arrest of seven members of a gang today. Prasanta Das, Indra Dahal, Parimal Das, Dhiren Kumar, Biswajit Raichoudhury, Naba Basumatary and Kishore Das were picked up from Maligaon and Panbazar around 2am today, during an operation carried out by Jalukbari police on the basis of intelligence inputs provided by the BSF.

The police are on the lookout for two of their accomplices, who are absconding.

A case has been registered against all seven accused at Jalukbari police station.

The police said Kumar, a resident of Gotanagar, is a retired postmaster, while Dahal is a higher secondary schoolteacher at Chandmari in Tezpur. He had been placed under suspension sometime ago for his alleged involvement in some irregularities in the school.

Prasanta Das is from Sualkuchi while Parimal Das is from Maligaon. Biswajit Raichoudhury is a resident of Udalguri, Naba Basumatary of Sarthebari in Barpeta, and Kishore Das hails from Santipur.

The police suspect the racket involved in supplying fake notes for circulation. “It is suspected that they may have been printing fake notes as well,” a police source said.

“We sent a decoy to Prasanta Das and Indra Dahal to strike a deal. The duo told the decoy that they would provide him with a fake note printing machine and negative prints of different denominations of currency notes. According to the accused, fake notes can be printed at the machine using negative prints,” the official said.

Das and Dahal agreed to sell off the machine and the negative prints for a minimum amount of Rs 30 lakh.

“When our decoy insisted on seeing the machine and its operation, he was taken to the residence of Parimal Das near Railway Gate Number 3 at Maligaon. Das produced two negative prints of currency notes but could not show the machine to our decoy last night. The accused asked the decoy to come back the next day along with the money, if he wanted a demonstration,” the source said.

Soon after, a police team raided Parimal Das’s residence and arrested him. Some negative prints of notes were also seized. “On the basis of a confession made by Das, the others were arrested from Maligaon and Panbazar,” a police officer said. No printing machine was found in Das’s house. The group will be produced in court tomorrow.