Five people arrested with fake notes of Rs 35 lakh

Five people, including a suspected Bangladeshi national, have been arrested by the Special Task Force (STF) of Kolkata Police and fake currency notes having face value of Rs 35 lakh seized from them, a senior police official said here on Sunday.

Acting on a tip off, the STF team conducted a raid late last night at a businessman's house in Posta Police Station area limits and nabbed the five Trinath Mandal, Sanjay Mandal, Prabas Mandal, Pradip Mandal and Sanjay Singh and recovered the Fake Indian Currency Nnotes (FICN) stashed in five bags, a senior STF official said.

According to a top STF source, Trinath is supposed to be a Bangladeshi who entered India through Malda district, which howvere is is yet to be confirmed.

The other four of the group were residents of Baishnabnagar of Malda, the senior STF official said.

“We received news that five people were travelling from Malda to Howrah with FICN and were scheduled to visit a Posta-based businessman. We were present at the Howrah station and trailed them to Posta and rounded them up and seized the bags containing the fake currencies," he said.

All the FICN were in the face value of Rs 1,000 rupees notes and were of very high quality, he said.

“We are ascertaining whether these persons have links to any terrorist groups. We have already started a probe into the incident,” he added.

When produced at a local court, the five were remanded to ten-day police custody.

Elsewhere in Gaya and West Champaran districts of Bihar, seven smugglers with a consignment of Fake Indian Currency Notes (FICN) with a total face value of of Rs 9.5 lakh were recovered on Sunday.