By IANS,
Lucknow : The Uttar Pradesh police Wednesday arrested a person in Ballia district of eastern UP and recovered fake currency notes with the face value of Rs.18,000 from his possession, officials said.
The arrest was made following a complaint from the cashier of a local bank when the man was trying to deposit the counterfeit currency there. Ballia is 300 km from here.
“The cashier of Bank of India passed the information to the police after which we arrested him,” Ballia superintendent of police Lalji Shukla told IANS over phone.
However, the identity of the man has not been disclosed yet.
“We suspect him to be a part of an international gang involved in circulating fake currency and are interrogating him for further clues,” Shukla added.
In recent times, UP has been fast becoming a hub for counterfeit currency smuggled purportedly across the porous and largely unguarded border with Nepal.
In August, a Reserve Bank of India team had unearthed counterfeit currency amounting to over Rs.5 million from the currency chest of the State Bank of India’s Domariaganj branch in Siddharthnagar district. This followed the arrest of the bank’s chief cashier and recovery of a large amount of both genuine and fake currency from his house.
Fake currency was also recovered from other banks throughout the state.