State asks Karnataka to hand over Abdul Telgi

MUMBAI: Maharashtra deputy chief minister Chhagan Bhujbal on Friday wrote to Karnataka chief minister S.M. Krishna requesting him to hand over Abdul Karim Telgi, the prime accused in the Rs 2,000-crore fake stamp paper racket, to the Pune police for interrogation. Earlier, the Pune police had written to the state government seeking permission to file a writ petition against the Karnataka government after it refused to hand over Telgi, official sources said.The Pune police have so far arrested 19 persons in the case for forgery, cheating and criminal conspiracy, and unearthed 30,000 clients spread all over the country, to whom Telgi’s gang had sold fake stamp papers. About 4,000 of these clients were from Mumbai, sources said. Telgi, 40, a native of Khanapur in Karnataka’s Belgaum district, is currently in the judicial custody of a metropolitan court in Bangalore, facing trial in a similar case booked against him by the Upparpeth police. He was arrested in October last year and has been in custody ever since. The Bund Garden police in Pune stumbled upon his illegal empire last month when it raided his earlier hideouts in Pune, Mumbai and Bhiwandi and seized a a large number of fake stamp papers and printing machinery. The police arrested the racket’s ‘chief operation officer’ Uday Sawant and ‘production manager’ Dashrath Sawant in Mumbai, and learnt that Sawant, who was picked up from Bhandup, procured raw material for the stamps and distributed them. Soon, the police learnt that the entire network was being run by Telgi while in custody. The police also learnt that he was arrested in Mumbai as late as June 1995 for allegedly selling fake stamp papers of Rs 45 lakhs to certain private firms. However, he was released on bail, only to be picked up by the Bangalore police much later. The Pune police then wrote to the 9th metropolitan court in Bangalore requesting Telgi’s custody. However, on June 27, the court rejected the request citing a Karnataka government notification issued in February 2002 which stated that Telgi could not be removed from the prison as long as the notification was in force. The Pune police then wrote to the state government saying that the grounds cited by the Karnataka government were “untenable’’. However, the government chose to request the Karnataka government instead of going in for litigation.