Post News Network
Cuttack, Sept 30: Fake currency is doing brisk business in the city once again. This was corroborated by the busting of a counterfeit currency manufacturing unit at Nimaishapur under Kandarpur police limits recently.
Police arrested Tarakanta Mahanty alias Shankar and produced him in a court in connection with running the fake currency business.
Police sources said, Badchana police in Jajpur had arrested Shankar on charges of supplying counterfeits currency March 16, 2013. He was also sent to jail by a Jajpur-based court. “Tarakanta Mahanty alias Shankar was operating the currency unit at Nimaishapur after his release from Jajpur jail. According to preliminary reports, Shankar is associated with a few counterfeits currency racketeers of Bihar,” Kandarpur police in-charge MK Senapati said.
Police had busted a fake currency unit at Madhusudan Nagar here in 2003. They had nabbed a lecturer couple and seized huge counterfeit notes, printers, computers and equipment. The Crime Branch had launched a probe into the incident and traced the kingpin of the racket to Nagaland. Similarly, police had seized fake currency of various denominations from a lodge at Badambadi in 2011 and arrested three persons including a woman from Bihar.
A few city-based intellectuals, meanwhile, blamed the commissionerate police for the resurfacing of counterfeit currency units here. “Police have never made any serious effort to trace the persons involved in the fake currency recycling rackets. They have a very casual attitude to the counterfeit notes issue,” said a social activist.
Deputy commissioner of police Sanjeev Arora said, “We will bring Shankar on remand and interrogate him about his associations in the fake currency business kingdom and from where he smuggled the technology.”
