Akshata Sharma
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SURAT: Driven by a greed to amass huge wealth quickly, a sari printer misused his expertise in colour and printing to make duplicate Indian currency notes, which he smartly used in a vegetable market for 10 months.
But he landed in the soup after an unassuming tomato vendor got suspicious of his unusually frequent purchases and alerted the police.
Udhna police arrested the printer Pintu alias Shivanand Pal, 41, and recovered 259 counterfeit currency notes from him.
Pal had circulated fake notes with a face value of Rs 3.5 lakh in the market in the last 10 months, said SN Desai, inspector, Udhna police station.
According to details, Pal, a native of Uttar Pradesh, started living in Pandesara 10 months ago.
He came to know that his neighbor Salman was printing fake notes. Initially, he learnt the technique from Salman. As Pal was a saree printer, he could successfully make FICN that resembled the original ones with his color and ink skills. He also chose a good-quality paper which was similar to that used in printing Rs 100 notes.
"Pal knew that vendors mostly scrutinize Rs 500 denomination notes. So, he printed Rs 100 denomination notes to avoid suspicious eyes.
His target was to make Rs 2,250 daily using this illegal means," said Desai.
Pal would go to the vegetable market daily with 25 fake notes and buy vegetables worth Rs 10 from vendors. He would get Rs 90 as a change in return in original notes and this was his profit. "In the last 10 months, he had spent FICN worth Rs. 3.5 lakhs in such manner," said police. However, a tomato vendor got suspicious and wondered why Pal purchased tomatoes and other vegetables for Rs 10 only every day and he alerted the police.
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