Toll plazas, grocery stores: How 3.5 crore fake Rs 20 coins entered market - The Indian Express
Through liquor shops, toll plazas and grocery stores, a counterfeit coin syndicate has allegedly put fake Rs 20 coins worth an estimated Rs 70 crore into circulation, police said.
Saharanpur Police busted the gang, arresting five alleged members in the Titron area on Sunday while they were transporting machinery to set up a new unit in the district. Police said the gang allegedly operated across Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Bihar.
“The gang claimed to have the capacity to produce 10,000 to 12,000 counterfeit coins a day using the machines. These coins were then circulated through liquor shops, toll plazas and grocery stores on a commission basis, with liquor shops reportedly being the gang’s primary market,” said Saharanpur SSP Abhinandan.
Police claimed to have recovered 6,400 counterfeit Rs 20 coins, with a face value of Rs 1.28 lakh, semi-finished coins estimated to be worth around Rs 5 lakh, and six coin-making machines.
Among the five arrested is the alleged kingpin, Upkar Luthra alias Abhay Pratap Singh, who used to work as a goldsmith in Punjab’s Mohali.
Police said Luthra, who is in his 50s, has been involved in the counterfeit coin trade since 2001. He was arrested by Delhi Police in 2017 after a Rs 1 lakh reward was announced for information leading to his capture.
The other four are Himanshu alias Gullu of Saharanpur; Kuldeep of Muzaffarnagar; Anurag Pal alias Lankesh of Bhadohi; and Santosh Chaurasia alias Janardan of Bihar. They are aged between 30 and 40.
Asked how police arrived at the Rs 70-crore figure, Superintendent of Police Vyom Bindal said it was an estimate of the value of fake coins the accused had circulated in the market.
The arrests come days after counterfeit currency worth Rs 17.29 crore was recovered from the currency chest of a nationalised bank in the district. The recovery is being probed by the National Investigation Agency (NIA), which has arrested one person so far.
Police said the eight members had been assigned different roles within the network. While some were responsible for arranging machinery and overseeing production, others supplied the finished coins to agents and handled their circulation in the market. This was done to ensure the entire network did not come to light if any one member was arrested.
Police said Upkar met Himanshu alias Gullu in Tihar Jail, and that their meeting eventually laid the foundation for the network. Other members allegedly joined the network later after meeting the two in different jails, police said.
The accused, officers said, also claimed each counterfeit coin cost around Rs 5 to Rs 6 to manufacture, after which the gang supplied the coins to agents for Rs 12 to Rs 15 apiece.
A police officer said the gang had earlier operated a counterfeit coin manufacturing unit in Haryana and was now planning to shift its operations to Saharanpur. The machines they seized were not new and seemed to have been used previously.
Police are investigating where the machines were purchased from and where the gang had planned to establish the unit in Saharanpur. Police are also tracing the gang’s supply network with the help of eight mobile phones, seven account registers and other documents recovered during the operation.
The seizures also included five iron dies (tools) used to manufacture the counterfeit coins; 39 unmarked dies; 20 marked dies; a die-polishing machine; two grinding stones; five hammers; an iron-cutting saw; and an electronic weighing scale.
During the probe, officers said they will unearth how long the gang had been operating and how many consignments of counterfeit coins it had circulated in the market.
