Police arrested a Congress worker on Monday morning on the charge of carrying counterfeit currency at Malda's Baishnabnagar.
The accused was trying to complete a transaction by giving two fake Rs 2,000 notes to a shopkeeper at a market. As soon as the shopkeeper had a doubt in his mind, he called up the police, who arrested the accused from the marketplace.
Police said Digambar Mondal, a member of Kaliachak-III Panchayat, was arrested on the charge of carrying counterfeit currency. He managed to secure bail later.
On Monday, Mondal had gone to the market in Malda. He entered a shop with the purpose of buying some products and paid the shopkeeper with four notes. On examining the notes, the shopkeeper noticed a couple of those notes seemed to be counterfeit.
"Doubt grew in the shopkeeper's mind. He caught the man and locked him inside a room and called the police. Officers of Baishnabnagar police station arrested the man after checking the notes. He was taken to the police lockup where he was interrogated for a while," said a police source.
The accused was later taken to Malda Court and remanded to four days in judicial custody. "We have initiated a case. We suspect there are other people who could be involved in a counterfeit currency racket," said a police officer.
It may be recalled that a Rs 2,000 note deposited by a diagnostic centre to the Bhawanipur branch of Union Bank of India was recently found to be fake. A team of investigators from Kolkata Police reached the spot and found that the Bhawanipur-based research and diagnostics lab had deposited Rs 50,000 in the bank and only one Rs 2,000 note was found to be counterfeit.
With many such cases cropping up in Malda and Kolkata, the trend could alert the law and order machinery across the country, as one of the primary objectives of the demonetisation drive launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi was to put fake currency out of circulation.