Three-member gang of cheats held

By Our Staff Reporter

HYDERABAD, AUG. 5. The Commissioner's Task Force sleuths, on Sunday, arrested a three-member gang of cheats near the Secunderabad railway station while it was passing on plain white paper bundles as fake currency with a few genuine notes placed on either side of the bundles.

Addressing a press conference, Mr. T. Yoganand, Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police, Task Force, said that they were caught in front of a restaurant while waiting for the arrival of a buyer, who struck a deal with them. All the three accused -- K. Venkateswara Rao (35), G. Ravi Raju (32) and I. Srinivasa Raju (34) -- were native of Bheemavaram in West Godavari district.

Two bags, one containing a wooden box filled with newspapers and covered with original Rs. 50 notes on top and bottom, and another having nine bundles of white papers cut to the size of Rs. 100 note with original Rs. 100 notes on either side of the bundles, and two cell phones were seized from them.

On interrogation, Venkateswara Rao reportedly confessed that he was robbed of Rs. 1 lakh in a similar fashion by one Vijaya Sai Chowdary, a notorious cheat of West Godavari district. He happened to meet Katta Bhubanna, the king-pin in the fake currency racket in West Godavari district, who was subsequently arrested by the Vijayawada police 15 days ago.

Ravi Raju, who lost Rs. 1 lakh in a similar deal with Bhubanna, met Venkateswara Rao. Both of them joined hands with Srinivasa Raju, a real estate agent residing in Hyderabad for the past two years. They hatched a plan to regain the money in the same fashion they had lost.

As per the modus operandi, they offer fake currency notes to some amount of original money in the ratio of 1:3. During the exchange, they snatch away the money brought by the buyers and simultaneously one of them would scare the buyers to run away shouting "police, police".

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