Acting on an uproar created by an alert owner of an electronics shop at Mohammad Ali Road, officers of the J J Marg police station arrested one Mansoor Shaikh (42) while he was circulating fake currency notes in the market.According to Police Inspector Santosh Bagve from the JJ Marg police station, “The accused had entered the shop of the complainant, Shahid Khan (30), on November 12 on the pretext of buying some audio cassettes. After buying the items, Shaikh paid for the goods with currency notes of 500 denominations. While Khan was calculating the change, he saw the accused buying something else from the shop located right next to Khan’s store and saw him paying with a 500-rupee note. Khan immediately got suspicious as he was handing back change for the 500 rupee note and the customer did not have to hand over another Rs 500 note for his minor purchases.” A suspicious Khan immediately apprehended Shaikh and was arguing with him about the genuineness of the currency notes when two constables posted on patrolling nearby saw the altercation and intervened to resolve the issue. During the course of the quarrel, Khan told the cops about what had happened and they took the accused, later identified as Shaikh, to the police station. “While frisking him, we also recovered an amount of Rs. 23,000 in denominations of 500 on his person, which we found out to be fake,” said Bagve. Shaikh was then arrested. On raiding his residence in Antop Hill, police recovered 500 notes worth Rs 42,000. Shaikh lives in the house with his wife, children and aged parents.“During interrogation, we found that Shaikh used to visit Bangladesh once or twice a year to bring in fake currency notes and would later circulate them in the market by making purchases. So far, we have gathered that this was his fourth visit. He also has cases of theft and other offences against him in various other police stations,” said Bagve. Shaikh has been remanded to police custody till November 18 for further interrogation.
