The state assembly election in Madhya Pradesh will be held on November 28. It was recently reported that the state saw a 300% increase in circulation of fake notes after demonetization in 2016.
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Bhopal: An order was placed to print fake notes worth Rs. 3 crore before Madhya Pradesh state elections according to a counterfeiter who was arrested in Bhopal on Friday.
A former state-level hockey player, Aftab Ali, also known as Mushtaq Khan, told interrogators that a man from Bhopal who he didn’t disclose had placed an order with him to print fake 2000 rupee and 500 rupee notes.
He was arrested along with five others on Oct 9 from Rajgarh and Hoshangabad in Bhopal.
“The police seized fake notes with a face value of Rs 31.50 lakh in denominations of Rs 2000 and Rs 500 from them, said Simala Prasad, superintendent of police, Rajgarh. During interrogation, the five men said the notes were scanned by a machine and later printed on sheets of paper before being cut and arranged in bundles. Police said the same serial number was printed on all the notes of Rs 2000 denomination while there was another number on all the notes of Rs 500 denomination. Police are yet to find out the place from where the gang procured the paper to print the fake notes,” Hindustan Times reported.
The police said that Aftab was the kingpin of the gang notorious for printing and circulating fake currency notes in MP and was involved in it for the past one year.
“Aftab claimed that according to the order from a man in Bhopal his gang was supposed to print the notes in denominations of Rs 2,000 and Rs 500 before the state assembly elections to distribute the same among such people who cannot understand the difference between genuine and fake currency notes, police said. However, Aftab has not disclosed the name of the man who allegedly placed the order for fake notes. He also claimed that he was asked to print the notes for a certain commission,” the HT report said.
“As of now, we can’t say that the fake notes were being printed for its use during the elections but interrogation will bring out the truth,” said Prasad in the report.
The state assembly election in Madhya Pradesh will be held on November 28. It was recently reported that the state saw a 300% increase in circulation of fake notes after demonetization in 2016.
“In the past 20 months, the Madhya Pradesh Police has seized fake notes worth Rs 1.29 crore in both new and old currency notes. According to the data provided by the Madhya Pradesh Special Task Force, in around 40 cases of fake rupee notes till August 2018, various state police agencies have seized Rs 1.29 crore in counterfeit currency. Interestingly, in 2015 and 2016, the police seized much lower amounts in fake notes — Rs 31.73 lakh and Rs 10.76 lakh, respectively. A sum of the two figures, Rs 42.5 lakh, shows that after demonetisation, there was a threefold jump in the counterfeit currency seized in Madhya Pradesh,” reported Firstpost.
The Union Govt and RBI had made claims that the new currency had security features that could not be faked.