Pune: Vishrambaug police have busted a gang involved in printing and circulating counterfeit currency notes of Rs 500 denomination.Four people have been arrested in the case, and police have seized 1,128 counterfeit notes with a face value of Rs 5.64 lakh, along with a printer, monitor and other equipment.Police are investigating how many more counterfeit notes the gang produced and whether any of them had been circulated in the market. A case has been registered at Vishrambaug police station.Deputy commissioner of police (zone I) Krushikesh Rawale said, “We arrested the first suspect on Oct 14 and then went on to arrest the other suspects. The arrested men have been identified as Salman Jainuddin Raje (30) of Kedgaon in Daund, Shafaz Firoz Ansari (30) of Nalasopara, Vishal Vilas Galande (37) of Man in Satara district, and Abhijit Raosaheb Kamble (30) of Shirol in Kolhapur district.”Senior inspector Navnath Jagtap said, “Raje was arrested by Sahakarnagar police about a year ago in an attempt-to-murder case. He was remanded to judicial custody, where he met Ansari. Ansari had been arrested by police in a counterfeit currency case.”Police constables Sachin Ahivale and Shailesh Surve received information that a suspect would arrive in the Mahatma Phule Mandai area with counterfeit notes. Police laid a trap in the area and nabbed the suspect.“The gang was printing counterfeit notes at a house in Shirol in Kolhapur district and circulating them,” Jagtap said.Police subsequently raided the house in Shirol and seized equipment used to produce counterfeit notes, including a printer, monitor, keyboard, mouse, CPU and other items. A total of 1,128 counterfeit notes were seized.
