SURAT: City police seized fake currency notes with the face value of Rs 317 crore from various locations in Gujarat and Mumbai and arrested six persons, officials said on Tuesday.
The main accused, Vikas Jain, was picked up from Mumbai. He runs a courier firm with branches in different cities. The counterfeit currency notes were seized from various locations in Mumbai, Anand, Surat and Jamnagar.
The Fake Indian Currency Notes (FICN) in denominations of Rs 2,000 and Rs 500 as well as those of scrapped notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 were seized after the recent arrest of one Hitesh Kotadiya, who was driving an ambulance with the fake currency having the face value of Rs 25.8 crore, the Surat (Rural) Police said in a release.
More than 28 units of the seized FICN had "Reverse Bank of India" and "movie shooting purpose only" printed on them, which the police said was meant to mislead authorities.
Officials of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and forensic experts have established the seizure as FICN, police said.
A First Information Report (FIR) was registered against the six persons under sections 489 (A)(B)(C) (traffic or use as genuine counterfeit currency notes), 406 (criminal breach of trust ), 420 (cheating), 201 (causing disappearance of evidence), and 120 (B) (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
According to police, Jain supplied FICN to the accused persons. He runs the courier service with offices in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi.
Jain used to get the fake banknotes printed in different cities in north India and transport them to Mumbai through his courier service.
He hid the fake currency at a godown in the Maharashtra capital, the release said. Police seized fake notes with a face value of Rs 227 crore of the total seizure from Mumbai alone.
The accused persons were passing off FICN as genuine banknotes and they had nothing to do with movie production, police said. All the six accused conspired to cheat companies which donated money to a trust, police said.