Fake currency gang busted, 10 arrested

​Hyderabad: The Special Operations Team (SOT) of LB Nagar police on Tuesday busted a fake currency racket and arrested 10 persons in this connection. 

According to Rachakonda Police Commissioner Mahesh M Bhagwat, acting on a tip-off, the LB Nagar SOT sleuths conducted raid at a house in Doctor’s Colony of Saroor Nagar and arrested the gang of ten members indulging in printing fake currency of Rs 2,000 and 500 denominations for circulating into the market as a genuine notes. 

The accused are identified as E Rajesh, Roshan Mahaboob Shaik, B Sukesh, I Durga Prasad, Mohammed Baba, Mohammed Shakeel, P Dharani, a dental doctor, K Srinivas, I Srinivas Chandrasekhar, realtor, Mohammed Ismail. A manhunt has been launched to nab the absconders Rajashekhar and Suresh Naidu. 

The CP said the gang with a criminal conspiracy planned to print the duplicate fake currency notes and procured colour printer, scanner, screen printing machine. 

By using similar paper of currency notes and by placing the original currency note in the scanner machine they were printing the colour copies using printer and cutting the copies to similar dimensions of original notes. Later, they were making them into a bundle by affixing watermarks of Mahatma Gandhi and electrotype 2,000 numeral with the screen printing materials.  

The main accused E Rajesh hatched a plan in-connivance with his associates and divided his team into two groups. One group of Raja Shekar and Suresh Naidu used to print Rs 500 FICN notes and second group of Srinivas, Chandrashekar, Sukesh and Durga Prasad agreed to print Rs 2,000 FICN notes in the house of Rajesh and were easily earning money.

 Rajes was earlier arrested in a fake educational certificate case in Kukatpally police station limits. The accused parties entered into an agreement of 1:3 ratio and initially gave Rs 2,000 FICN notes of 3 lakh  to Mohammad Baba and Mohammed Shakeel by taking original Rs 90,000. 

Both Mohammad Baba and Shakeel circulated the fake currency notes as genuine notes in cattle markets at Ibrahimpatnam, Choutuppal, Shadnagar, Nalgonda. After successfully circulating the fake currency notes in the markets, they again took Rs 19.5 lakh FICN of 500 denominations from Rajesh and his associates by giving them original currency of Rs 5.20 lakh. They both circulated Rs 70,000 FICN in the market and the remaining FICN currency worth Rs 18.80 lakh remained with Rajesh. 

The police seized Rs 31.25 lakh worth fake Indian currency notes (FICN) of Rs 2,000 and 500 denomination, printers, scanners and mobile phones from the possession of the accused.