Lucknow, June 30 (Inditop.com) Four people were arrested with counterfeit currency notes worth nearly Rs.500,000 in Uttar Pradesh, police said Tuesday.
“Acting on a tip-off, the four men were arrested late Monday evening in the Havelia Khas locality in Basti district,” Additional Superintendent of Police Manoj Kumar Jha told IANS over the phone.
According to police sources, preliminary investigations have revealed that the four are part of a fake currency racket operating in various districts of Uttar Pradesh and its neighbouring states, including Bihar and Madhya Pradesh.
“The four used to charge their clients Rs.100,000 in lieu of every consignment of fake notes worth Rs.200,000,” said an official, who was part of the team that arrested the four from a hideout in Basti, about 275 km from Lucknow.
Computers, scanners, colour printers used by the four for manufacturing counterfeit currency notes were recovered from the hideout, police said.
Uttar Pradesh is seen to be becoming a hub for counterfeit currency smuggled purportedly across the porous and largely unguarded border with Nepal.
In August 2008, a Reserve Bank of India team unearthed counterfeit currency amounting to over Rs.5 million from the currency chest of the State Bank of India’s Domariaganj branch in Siddharth Nagar district which is close to Nepal. This followed the arrest of the bank’s chief cashier and recovery of a large amount of both genuine and fake currency from his house.
