Tea hawker helps bust note racket

KOLKATA: A tea stall owner becamesuspicious when one his customers gave him Rs after having a glass of tea worthRs 2. He took the trouble of informing the police thus helped bust a fakecurrency racket.Five members of a citybased gang, printing hundredsof fake Rs 500 notes, were arrested. They include businessman, one school twocivic employees. Police suspect that this is part a country-widenetwork.The existence of the racket came to light on Wednesday nightwhen Sudipta Basu Tollygunge Road went to a local tea stall, had tea and askedthe stall owner to change a Rs 500 note.The stall owner, Ram ChandraDas, examined the note carefully. This scared Sudipta, who tried to walk awaywithout paying any money. Das chased the young man and finally handed him overto the police. During interrogation, Sudipta admitted that he was part of a fakecurrency racket.The police raided the AJC Bose Kolkata MunicipalCorporation quarters and arrested businessman Paresh Mehta, KMC employees TarunMondal and Sanjay Batabyal and St Paul’s School employee Swarup Bag. Atotal of 76 fake Rs 500 notes were recovered from them.Charu Marketpolice station sources revealed that the forgery was done by copying theoriginal note with the help of a scanner. Computer-aided designs recreated awater mark-like impression perfectly. “The difference between a genuineand a forged note was blurred,� an officer said. In another incident,police arrested one Narayan Sharma who had forged the signature of a dead manand transferred share certificates worth Rs 8 lakh to his ownaccount.DC (DD) II Pradip Sanyal said Sharma, 52, a neighbour of thedeceased Birendra Kishore Dutta of New Alipore had forged the latter’ssignature and taken his share certificates. After Dutta’s death in 1997,his son Dilip who lived in Delhi had asked Sharma to look after hisfather’s financial transactions. But since August that year, Dilip did notreceive any dividends.