Mumbai fake currency racket bust, cops probe Kerala links

Mumbai: The Mumbai Police are investigating a possible Kerala connection in a racket of fake Indian currency note printing which was bust in Navi Mumbai, official sources said.

While two persons have been arrested, one has been detained in Idukki for the clandestine racket of printing superior quality Rs.500 notes with a face value of Rs. 2.95 lakhs and slipping them into the market circulation with genuine currency notes.

“The arrested are Vishnu Vijayan of Pondikolam in Thiruvananthapuram and Don Verkey, a former shipping company employee of Idukki. We have also detained for investigation one Leo George in Idukki. Prima facie he is suspected to be the kingpin of the racket which may have its tentacles in Kerala and Tamil Nadu,” Mumbai Crime Branch Deputy Commissioner of Police Akbar Pathan told IANS.

Vijayan is an electronics engineer, Verkey was the investor who put in Rs.10 lakhs to buy a workshop and a press to print the fake notes, he added.

Police sources further said that George is believed to be involved in a similar FICN printing case and arrested by the Kerala Police in July 2018, along with an actress and her relatives.

“At that time the Kerala Police had seized Rs.57 lakhs worth of FICN and later arrested a Malayalam teleserial actress Surya Sashikumar and two of her family members for their alleged involvement in the racket,” the official, declining to be identified said.

When asked of their likely involvement in the Navi Mumbai operation, DCP Pathan merely said that “we are investigating from all possible angles and take action against anyone found involved in the crime”.

The covert operation of Navi Mumbai was busted after a tip-off to a policeman Amit Mahangade that a couple of men were expected to deliver a FICN consignment at a location in the posh Veera Desai Road in Andheri west.

After due verification, a team led by Unit IX Senior Police Inspector Mahesh Desai and Inspector Asha Korke swooped on the accused duo – Vijayan and Verkey – late on Thursday.

They were produced before a Mumbai Court and remanded to police custody till Wednesday, March 11.

The Crime Branch team also recovered nearly 600 FICN of Rs.500 denomination and were stunned to see that the watermark on the fake notes was strikingly similar to the genuine currency notes, though certain other minor features were not matching.

The team raided the Navi Mumbai printing press and recovered printers, laptop, high quality GSM paper, a metal scale bearing a stamp of the Reserve Bank of India, which is suspected to have been stolen, weighing instruments, and heat-resistant packet in which the printed fake notes were placed and ironed to give a crispy new note feel to the FICN.-IANS News