Vendors, shopkeepers examined as witnesses in fake notes case trial

VADODARA: The additional sessions court in Diwalipura has been witnessing frequent visits of vegetable vendors and roadside fruit sellers and small shop owners since August.


These vendors that include a vegetable seller, two fruit sellers, a tyre repairer, a flour mill owner, a provision store owner, a petrol pump owner and a petrol pump attendant are not fighting any legal battle against the encroachment department of the civic body or any other person. They are all witnesses in a case of fake Indian currency notes (FICN) racket.

Abid Mohammed Pathan, an auto-rickshaw driver, had taken to printing and circulating fake notes to finance his brother’s release, who was held in a similar offence last year. After Pathan’s arrest on March 19 near Kelanpur railway station, Vadodara rural police were successful in tracking down over 30 such persons with whom Pathan had exchanged fake notes for several products.

After a thorough investigation of over three months, Vadodara (rural) police filed a chargesheet in which they listed around 67 witnesses and material witnesses. Ever since the

trial

began in August, more than 30 witnesses including some policemen have been examined in the court. But after examining the cops, all these vendors with whom Pathan had exchanged fake notes were summoned and examined.

A police official said that during the course of trial, these vendors informed the court that they had received a fake currency notes of Rs 500 denomination. “All of them have said that a rickshaw driver had given them this notes, but they are not able to identify Pathan. They claim that they receive hundreds of customers daily, so they couldn’t identify any particular person’s face,” said a police official.

On Monday, two fruit vendors, a roadside vendor selling bedsheets and pillows, a petrol pump owner and an attendant were examined. All of them said that Pathan shopped for around Rs 100 each from them and gave them Rs 500 notes. However, it was only later that they realized that the notes were fake.

A police source said that Pathan had brought a rubber tube from tyre repairer, one kg

sugar

from a provision store owner and some vegetables from the vendor.

While most of them had torn the note, cops were able to recover the fake notes from few of them.

Pathan used to make notes at home using a printer

Abid Mohammed Pathan used to scan the original notes and print the colour copies on an A4 size paper. On each paper, he used to print four notes and used adhesive tape as

security thread

. Police had found 77 notes of Rs 2,000 denomination, 1,652 notes of Rs 500 and 238 notes of Rs 100 denomination. The total face value of the fake notes found from him was over Rs 10 lakh.