Raiganj, March 30: A clueless district police called in the CID today to probe whether the fake stamp papers, worth Rs 3.9 lakh, seized from a bus at Chopra yesterday has any link with the Telgi scam.

The fake non-judicial stamp papers — 967 in number — were seized from the luggage of Zafar Ahmed at Sonapur checkpost.

North Dinajpur district superintendent of police Nabarun Bhattacharya said a team of CID officials from Calcutta arrived at Chopra today to probe and verify the information derived from Ahmed after interrogating him.

Ahmed told the police that he was a resident of Karbala Bazar in Siwan district of Bihar and had been working as a tailor at Paltan Bazar in Assam’s Dibrugarh.

Recently, a man named Hussain from his hometown had called him up in Dibrugarh and asked him to collect a packet from a person. Accordingly, Nabi Ahmed met him two days before he undertook a journey to Bihar and handed him the packet the contents, of which Ahmed claimed, were not known to him.

“We don’t believe what he said. We have got in touch with the police in Bihar and Assam. He could not produce any rail or bus ticket from Dibrugarh to Siliguri. Even though he has been speaking dehati Hindi, he knows Bengali quite well. He probably is a trained smuggler,” Bhattacharya said.

Idol suspect grilled

The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) interrogated Md Mumtaz at Madarihat yesterday in connection with the Tagore memorabilia heist, reports our Siliguri correspondent.

Earlier in 1999, Mumtaz was caught near the Indo-Bangla border near Phansidewa and two idols of antique value recovered from his possession.

The Siliguri unit of the CID is preparing a list of antique dealers residing here and in the hills.