Baripada: Rajkumar Tudu, the mastermind of a counterfeit currency and drug dealing racket, revealed to the police that a lady police official had alerted him over cell phone immediately after the arrest of his aide.
After that, he had managed to flee to Chennai by train. Rajkumar was arrested from Bhubaneswar Monday after arriving from Chennai in a train.
He also told the police that he had learnt the art of making counterfeit currency notes by watching a YouTube video and then started printing fake notes out of plain paper using Photoshop software.
Rajkumar also told the police that he was using these fake notes to purchase drugs.
When he first purchased the contraband from a peddler, the latter could not know it. But the drug peddler alerted the police when Rajkumar turned up to him for the second time.
Baripada town police told this to media persons at a press meet here Wednesday.
Now, many seek to know about the lady police who helped Rajkumar escape.
Rajkumar also said that a gram of brown sugar costs Rs 1,400 in Bhubaneswar while it costs Rs 1,000 in Sunagadia area of Baripada.
He had purchased the contraband from drug dealer Shankar Mukhi several times in the past and took it to Bhubaneswar. Rajkumar had once purchased drug from Mukhi for Rs 8,000, but the stuff was found to be fake.
Thereupon, he decided to buy drug from Mukhi by paying in fake notes and even succeeded by paying Rs 10,000 in counterfeit notes.
Then, Rajkumar sent his friends Sagen Tudu and Ratnakar Singh with fake notes to Mukhi to purchase drug March 8. However, the drug dealer immediately identified a fake note of Rs 500 and informed a staff of civil squad. Police arrested Sagen but Ratnakar managed to escape.
Police had seized 32 counterfeit notes of Rs 500 denomination from Sagen, a college student, in Sunagadia. Sagen had told police that Rajkumar had sent the fake notes to him from Bhubaneswar.
Earlier, Nayapalli police in Bhubaneswar had arrested Ratnakar from Saliasahi in the capital in this connection and handed him over to Baripada police. PNN
