LUCKNOW: After taking the services of a group of priests for 11 days during a special puja at her home, a woman paid them in 'churan label' fake notes in Sitapur, around 80 km from state capital Lucknow.
The woman was later arrested on late Thursday evening.
As per the local police sources, the woman identified as Geeta Pathak, wife of GR Pathak, distributed fake notes or coupon notes to 40 priests after they performed an 11-day special ritual in Sitapur’s Terwa Manikpur village.
The priests created ruckus at her place after coming to know about the fake currency and lodged an FIR of fraud and criminal breach of trust against the woman at Rampur Mathura police station.
The Inspector general (IG) of police (Lucknow range) Laxmi Singh said the woman was arrested and interrogated. She claimed that scores of amusement notes (Churan currency) with Manoranjan Bank of India mentioned on them were recovered from her vehicle. The sources claimed that around 216 stacks of amusement currency was found from her vehicle.
As per the complaint of a priest Dilip Kumar Pathak of Bahraich, the woman hired him to conduct the 11-day rituals in her village. She had promised him a ‘dakshina’ of Rs 9 lakh for all arrangements. Pathak was joined by 39 other priests for the special puja. After the rituals were completed, the woman handed
Pathak and 39 other priests a bag containing currency notes as the gift, said the IG.
“But when they checked later, they found that notes placed on top were real currency notes while the remaining were fake to the face value of Rs 5.53 lakh,” she said.
Singh added that the fake notes were in the denominations of Rs 2000, Rs 500, Rs 100 and Rs 10. She said a police team had also been deployed in the village to avert further trouble, following the resentment among the priests.
Local sources claimed that the woman along with her husband have duped several people in the name of puja. She would go to a village and tell people that she could sense gold and silver buried in their village. She would then ask the villagers to help her taking out the treasure buried underground by conducting a special puja. She would ask them to shell out money if they wanted the treasure and decamp with money collected by the gullible villagers.