Pirated NCERT books found from Delhi to TN

A hand-written note found somewhere between pages of one of the 10 lakh-odd pirated NCERT textbooks that was seized in a Meerut warehouse recently made the Special Task Force of the UP police sit up. The books were to be delivered to almost every major town and city of India. There were names of vendors who would complete the "last mile" and also addresses of the shops that would stock up the counterfeits - one in Asansol, another in Madurai and Munger, a third in Delhi and a fourth in Chennai.


STF sleuths got a glimpse into the massive network, its spread surprising even top officers. It all started on Friday when, based on a tip, the STF raided a godown packed with

pirated NCERT books

. The consignment was ready for dispatch. The STF put its market value at 35 crore. The note that the STF chanced upon was part of a hand-written register that had had 926 entries containing the names, addresses and details of vendors including that of logistics firms.


"Apart from the order register, hundreds of used and unused bill books, computers, most likely containing stock records and balance sheets, have also been seized from the godown,” said Brijesh Singh, DSP STF. On Saturday, in another raid in neighbouring Amroha, the STF found a similar haul of fake NCERT textbooks whose market value has been pegged at Rs 15 crore. In all, eight persons have been arrested so far.

Sachin Gupta, a Meerut resident and a key player in the scam, is on the run. He is the nephew of BJP’s city vice-president Sanjeev Gupta. The party suspended him soon after the racket was unearthed.

A four-member NCERT team has now found that most of the counterfeit books were published with the “original” watermark, suggesting complicity of insiders. “This seems to be the tip of the iceberg,” a senior STF officer told TOI. “Few of us had seen a consignment of pirated books this size.”

In Chandigarh last year, the vigilance department had unearthed a racket of counterfeit NCERT textbooks. Probe agencies had then claimed UP was the source of these duplicate books.

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