AHMEDABAD:
The Rs 500 note you just tucked into your wallet may well be
fake!
Look before you pay. For,
Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 fake currency notes worth a whopping Rs 1 crore have been
pumped into the city. And if this is what a gang of criminals has confessed to
the police, investigators believe the number of fake notes circulating in the
market could amount to much more than
this.
It all started on January
1 when the owner of Vimal Bakery in Dariapur encountered a strange customer who
bought biscuits worth Rs 80 but gave him a Rs 1,000 note. The customer came back
again, and paid yet another Rs 1,000 note.
The shopkeeper grew suspicious
and checked the second Rs 1,000 note. He had a feeling that the note could be
fake and got into an argument with the customer. The commotion attracted the
attention of policemen in a mobile van who stopped, checked the note and found
it to be fake. The "customer", Kirti Patel alias Chitu, was
arrested.
Kirti turned out to
be the member of a gang specialising in printing fake notes. On Friday, four
more involved in the racket were arrested and some more fake notes worth Rs
30,000 seized along with two colour
printers.
Confessions by Patel
led the police to one Kamlesh Prajapati of Vanzar village in Sarkhej, where they
also found a colour photocopy machine and printer. Kamlesh then led the police
to Botad taluka near Ahmedabad where they nabbed one Kanha Bhadwad. A search of
his house yielded another, much-larger colour printer. A string of arrests
followed with more people being picked up, all from Botad and
Sarkhej.
"The gang has injected
fake notes of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 denominations. We are in the process of
tracking this fake currency. This could turn out to be part of a bigger racket
and more photocopy machines and printers could be recovered," said assistant
commissioner of police VK Amaliar.