Three in police net for circulating fake currency notes

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: Busting an interstate counterfeit currency racket, the Cottonpet police arrested a gang of three members red-handed with 1,307 fake notes of Rs 500 denomination with a face value of Rs 6.5 lakh in their possession.

The accused were identified by the police as Saravanan, 24, a native of Tamil Nadu; and two Kerala natives Devan Rajendran, 20, and Nitin Shivan, 21.

The police, however, said they are yet to trace the kingpin, suspected to be from Bihar, who sold fake notes worth Rs 1 lakh for Rs 25,000 with the help of the arrested accused.

"The matter came to light when some shopkeepers in and around the Majestic area informed the police of some people buying products with fake currency notes," the police said on Monday.

A police team, which was on alert, subsequently arrested Devan and Nitin on June 28. During interrogation, they confessed to Saravanan’s role. He was arrested later.

Till he was caught, Saravanan had misused fake currency notes adding up to Rs 10 lakh and circulated between Rs 3 lakh and Rs 4 lakh worth of them in Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, Bengaluru Police Commissioner B Dayananda said.

Preliminary investigation revealed that Saravanan is a diploma graduate, the police chief added. Saravanan had recently gone to Patna and returned to Tamil Nadu with a bag of fake currency notes. He then started circulating the notes through Devan and Nithin.

The trio was constantly in touch via Instagram. Further efforts are on to trace the kingpin of the racket, police said.