Lucknow/Bhopal, Jan 3 (IANS) Five people have been arrested and fake currency with a face value of over Rs.100,000 seized in separate raids carried out in two towns of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, police said Saturday.
Two people, including a woman, were held with counterfeit currency notes amounting to Rs.100,000 in Uttar Pradesh's Ballia district Friday night, district police chief Lalji Shukla told IANS over telephone.
'Acting on a tip-off, the two were arrested from Sahatwar railway station in Ballia,' Shukla said.
Ballia is around 300 km from Lucknow.
Preliminary investigations reveal that the two are part of a fake currency racket operating from Bihar and they circulated counterfeit currency in different districts of the state.
The two have admitted during interrogation that they were returning from Bihar after taking the consignment of fake currency notes.
In recent times, Uttar Pradesh has been fast becoming a hub for counterfeit currency being allegedly smuggled 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 Siddharthnagar district. The bank's chief cashier was later arrested and a large amount fake currency was recovered from his house.
On Friday night, a fake currency racket was also busted in Madhya Pradesh's Khargone district. Three people were arrested and printing equipment as well as counterfeit currency with a face value of Rs.27,000 was seized.
'The racket was busted with the arrest of Farid Khan, who is involved in circulating fake currency notes. On his information, Ramzan Khan and kingpin Azam Khan were arrested and fake currency notes in different denominations were recoverd from them. A printing unit was also found installed at Azam's house,' a police official said.
The matter came to light when Farid gave a fake Rs.500 note to a shopkeeper while purchasing a packet of cigarettes, said Head Constable Ramdas Yadav.
The shopkeeper informed the police and Farid was arrested. The police also recovered a few fake currency notes of Rs.500, Rs.100 and Rs.50 denominations.
'A case has been registered against all three and we are probing if they have links to any major gang involved in the racket,' Khargone's Kotwali police station in-charge Akhilesh Dwivedi told IANS.
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