Fake currency racketeers plead guilty, get 6 years in jail

The NIA special court has sentenced three men to six years’ simple imprisonment for running a fake currency note racket.

The court sentenced Mohammed Sajjad Ali, M G Raju and Abdul Kadir on Wednesday after they pleaded guilty in a case that came to the fore in March 2018. The trio, along with another accused named Vinitha, was caught in Madanayakanahalli, North Bengaluru, with a stash of fake Rs 2,000 notes having a face value of Rs 6.84 lakh. The case was initially registered at the Madanayakanahalli police station before being transferred to the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in September 2018.

During the investigation, the NIA identified three more members of the gang — Vijay, from Karnataka, Sabiruddin and Zahiruddin, both from Malda, West Bengal. The NIA managed to arrest Vijay and Sabiruddin while Zahiruddin is still at large. It also arrested another suspect, Gangadhar Ramappa Kolkar.

The central agency filed a charge sheet against Ali, Raju, Kolkar and Vanitha in November 2018 and supplementary charge sheets against Kadir and Sabiruddin in March 2019 and against Vijay this year.

On December 1, the special court framed charges against all the seven charge-sheeted accused. The court sentenced three of them after they pleaded guilty. The trial against the four other accused is still underway.