Rs 4.5 crore fake 2000 notes recovery case investigation likely to be handed over to NIA

Gandhinagar/Rajkot: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) is soon likely to take charge of the case pertaining to the recovery of around 4.50 crore of fake notes of Rs 2000 denominations from Rajkot some time ago during two raids.

On March 3, the A-division police in Rajkot had recovered Rs 3.93 crore of fake notes of Rs 2000 denomination from a parked car belonging to a financier who has already been jailed in connection with the earlier recovery of over Rs 57 lakhs of such notes prior to that.

The investigation of the sensational case was later handed over to the special operation group (SOG) of the crime branch of Rajkot police.
PI of the SOG K K Zala today said that now the matter is likely to handed over to the NIA but so far he has not received any official intimation regarding it.
He said that so far six persons have been arrested in the matter. The notes were printed in a rented house in the city itself.
Meanwhile the home department of Gujarat has reportedly cleared the deck for handing over the investigation to the NIA. It is likely to investigate the case and its possible links with bigger rackets and even terror elements.

Looking at the seriousness of the matter and the amount involved with all of it being in the counterfeit version of newly introduced 2000 notes, the NIA is being involved, an official said.

Jailed financier Ketan Dave from whom police has seized fake currency notes of Rs 2000 denominations worth around Rs 57 lakh last month during a search of his office on Gondal road and his partner Sailesh Barvadiya had made a local scarp merchant Nitin Ajani RTGS Rs 50 lakh to a private courier firm (Pedhi) in Ahmedabad. They had assured him of payment in cash and showed him a bag filled with Rs 2000 notes. When they did not pay the money, the scrap merchant filed a case of cheating against them in the A-division police station which during investigation in search found the bag in the office of Dave and on suspicion sent the Rs 2000 notes kept in it to the Forensic Science Lab for test during which these were found to be counterfeit.

The raid on the car for recover of another 3.93 crores was conducted on the basis of the information received from a staff of Dave’s office, who was one of the six arrested in the case so far. The staff had during interrogation revealed that Dave used to keep large quantity of fake notes in cars.

Dave had during interrogation claimed that he had received the money from someone from Ahmedabad, which seems to be a false claim with recovery of printers from the car. It is suspected that he used to print such notes in a rented house in Panchnath plot area here.

Notably during heightened restrictions on cash withdrawals from banks and ATM’s after demonetization in November, fake notes worth around Rs 26 lakh were recovered in December last year from Rajkot which were brought from Ahmedabad.

DeshGujarat