Monday, 12 November 2007
Agartala, Nov. 11: Mizoram police and their counterparts from Tripura busted a thriving inter-state fake currency racket yesterday.
Five persons, including the manager of State Bank of India in Mamit district of Mizoram, Nikilal Sangliana, were arrested.
Sources in North Tripura police who had helped in the arrest of the suspects in Tripura, said for many months a large number of fake notes had been in circulation in Mamit. A section of bank employees smelt a rat when it started receiving fake notes from salary accounts.
People suspected that Sangliana and some bank employees could be involved in the racket.
On the basis of specific information, the police in Mamit started to monitor calls made and received by Sangliana.
The police, listening in to a phone conversation, came to know that on October 30, a packet containing fake currency totalling Rs 2 lakh will be deposited with the bank. Sources said Sangliana spoke over phone to a person called Karim Mia in Tripura.
On October 30, Laljoy Thanga and Lalbiak Thanga, two couriers of Karim Mia who had left Tripura, reached the spot when the transaction was about to take place. The police, lying in wait, pounced on the trio, including Sangliana, and nabbed them. The packet and a diary were seized.
The packet containing counterfeit notes had the words “Central Bank of Bangladesh” inscribed on it. The police also found names, addresses, fax numbers and email IDs of a number of banks and their personnel in Bangladesh. Help was sought from North Tripura police.
Having received details from Mamit police, the superintendent of police (North Tripura), Uttam Mazumder, traced Karim Mia to Kailasahar subdivision. A timber businessman and owner of several elephants, he had links with fake currency smugglers and was arrested by police yesterday. North Tripura police yesterday also arrested Gachhiram Reang, another fake currency smuggler, from the Damcherra area. After producing them in court in Kailasahar and Dharmangar, the police turned them over to their counterparts in Mizoram.
Sources said during interrogation, Karim Mia denied links with the racket but failed to answer why he had spoken over phone to Sangliana and sent the two couriers.
Reang told the police that a thriving fake currency racket had been operating for the past two years and counterfeit notes used to be pumped into Dhalai district of Tripura through the border in Kamalpur subdivision and taken to Mizoram for sale and circulation.
“Since the awareness level about fake notes is high among people and officials in Tripura, the member of the racket chose the backward district of Mizoram,” Mazumder said.
On October 2, Sagir Ahmed was arrested from a long-distance passenger bus at Panisagar.
Counterfeit notes totalling Rs 1.5 lakh were seized from him. He is still in jail as he has not been able to establish his identity as an Indian national. Mazumder suspects that Sagir was carrying fake notes to deposit with a bank in Mizoram.
| The Telegraph |
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