Lid blown off documents racket, six arrested

Six persons, including a Bangladeshi man, were arrested late on Saturday by the Rajarhat police in connection with running a racket that printed fake documents.

A number of sophisticated printers and computers were seized from the racketeers, who mainly conducted their illegal business in south Bengal, said cops. Two mobile sim cards — one Indian and the other Bangladeshi — were also seized.

While the Rajarhat cops had started the intitial investigation in order to track counterfeit cheques, they realized that the racket had a much wider ambit after the arrest of Amit Biswas, alias Amadul Jaman. On interrogating him, the cops found out that Biswas, who hails from Satkhira, Bangladesh, had been making counterfeit documents for about two years. He slowly spread his network, mainly in south Bengal, and was making fake documents, including PAN cards, driving licences, Aadhar cards and voters’ cards for clients.The cops were alerted to the fraudsters’ trail after an FIR was lodged by the manager of the Kathgola branch of State Bank of India. It initially looked like a bank fraud, where the fraudsters tried to withdraw money using fake cheques. In the FIR, Jagadish Prasad Gupta, the manager, complained that he had received a counterfeit cheque that was used to withdraw money from the branch. He told the cops that a person called Amit Biswas used the cheque to withdraw Rs 97,400. The cheque purported to have been issued by the same bank’s Sahagunj branch.

According to an SBI official, complaints on counterfeit cheques have come down of late. “But we received a few complaints in the last few months. These fakes were of very high quality and the fraudsters seemed to have broken all high security features, including the water-droplet tests,” the official said. Though the bank officials were surprised that a high-security CTS cheque was being counterfeited, tests soon revealed that it was indeed a fake.

“Working on definite leads, we arrested Biswas’ ally, Dipankar Rudra, from the Dumdum Cantonment area. It was difficult to fathom the spread of their business as they had clients from all across the state,” said Bidhannagar ADCP (airport division) Santosh Nimbalkar.

Dipankar had given the leads of two of his allies, Saheb Das alias Kanchan Das and Tapas Karmakar, both residents of Barasat, said the cops. Raids at the residences of the arrested persons led to seizure of computers, very sophisticated printers and fake rubber stamps. Police recovered rubber stamps including those of the regional transport authority of each district and transport secretary Alapan Bandyopadhyay.

“We are trying to find out their clients and who were funding them. Carriers for these documents might also lead to other fake document rackets,” said Nimbalkar. The Bidhannagar police is also looking into whether any of the six arrested persons had links with those involved in the Burdwan blast, a source added.

Source: indiatimes