Saharanpur: The police have busted a racket involved in the minting and circulation of counterfeit Rs 20 coins in the market. Five members of the gang have been arrested from Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh.
The gang allegedly circulated counterfeit coins worth nearly Rs 70 crore, the police said.
The accused were caught in the Titawa area of Saharanpur on Sunday while allegedly transporting machinery to set up a new unit in the district. The gang allegedly operated across Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Bihar, the police said, as reported by The Indian Express.
“It 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,” Saharanpur SSP Abhinandan said.
Officials said that Police 6,400 counterfeit Rs 20 coins, with a face value of Rs 1.28 lakh, were seized. Semi-finished coins estimated to be worth around Rs 5 lakh, and six coin-making machines were also seized.
The alleged kingpin, Upkar Luthra alias Abhay Pratap Singh is among those arrested. According to the police, Luthra, in his 50s, is a former goldsmith from Mohali, and has been involved in the counterfeit coin trade since 2001. He was arrested by the Delhi Police in 2017 after a Rs 1 lakh reward was announced for information leading to his capture.
The four others have been identified as 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.
The gang had earlier operated a counterfeit coin manufacturing unit in Haryana and was now planning to shift its operations to Saharanpur, a police official said. The machines seemed to have been used previously.
Gang members had been assigned different roles within the network, the police claimed. 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.
Upkar allegedly met Himanshu alias Gullu in Tihar Jail, and their meeting eventually laid the foundation for the network. Other members allegedly joined the network later after meeting the two in different jails, the police said.
The accused allegedly told the police that 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.
The police are investigating where the machines were purchased 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.
Investigation is focused on determining how long the gang had been operating and how many consignments of counterfeit coins it had circulated in the market.
