Telangana: Gangs focus on markets

Hyderabad: With the police acting tough on counterfeit currency exchange gangs in the city, other gangs who are in the business are targeting vegetable markets and are making their way using single persons. 

The suspects who purchase vegetables for around Rs 200 exchange fake Rs 2,000 currency notes and take the change in legal currency. Unlike their old way of exchanging currency in big amounts they are working with two or three notes per day which they found a slow but safe process, police say. The suspects in KPHB and Neredmet followed the same process, but were caught by the police.

Senior police officials say that unlike exchanging big amounts at a time exchanging in small quantities is very easy which is why they are choosing this process.

Last Sunday, the vendors at a vegetable market in KPHB, suspected a woman buying vegetables and handed over her to police. Police found that the woman identified as Anuyara Khatun, hailing from West Bengal, had counterfeit currency of Rs 2,000 denomination. 

Anuyara said she had come to Hyderabad for livelihood sake after her husband had passed away. She had been working as a maid in houses. She later met a couple identified as Babur Ali and Suhani, who made her take up the circulation of fake currency notes by offering commission. But inquiries revealed that before coming to Hyderabad, she was working in Mumbai, where she had met Babur Ali and Suhani. 

In Mumbai she was earning about Rs 6,000 per month. Lured by the couple to earn more she shifted to Hyderabad along with them and they were staying in a rented house.

Everyday the couple would give her three to four fake notes and drop her on a bike at a vegetable market, where she would exchange the notes. “This had been going on since many days. They did not pay her any commission, but offered a better pay at the end of their operation,” officials said. 

Police now suspect that they could have exchanged counterfeit notes in other city markets too. In the same manner, a four-member gang came to a vegetable market in Neredmet on Saturday and purchased vegetables for Rs 100 and gave a Rs 2,000 note and collected the change, which was found to be fake. The vendors caught one person while three escaped. Police said teams are working to trace the other three and through them they can know more details about their activities.