A 58-year-old resident of Punjab’s Zirakpur and his three associates were arrested for allegedly minting counterfeit coins of ₹ 20 denomination in an illegal factory in Haryana and circulating them in Indian markets, the Delhi Police crime branch said on Friday.
Luthra had been allegedly running the syndicate for over two decades in alleged association with his brother, Sweekar. Before his arrest, he had been running the syndicate from Nepal. He was also allegedly involved in the murder of his business partner,” added the officer.
Counterfeit ₹ 20 coins worth around ₹ 1 lakh were recovered from one of them, identified as Paras Jain, 45, after he was arrested from near Mundka Industrial Area Metro station in outer Delhi, where he had come to deliver the consignment of fake coins to a contact last month, two senior crime branch officers said.. Among the four, the 58-year-old Punjab resident Upkar Luthra, emerged as the alleged key player of the illegal business of manufacturing counterfeit Indian coins and supplying them to his contacts in various states at nearly half the value of each coin. “Luthra was last arrested in 2017 by the Delhi Police special cell from Haryana’s Sonepat with around 8,500 counterfeit coins in denominations of ₹ 5 and ₹ 10.
Both had been arrested in the past by the Delhi Police, said one of the officers.
Later, production warrants of Luthra and four others, identified as Anurag Pal, Janardhan Kumar Chaurasia, Kuldeep and Himanshu, were obtained and they were produced before the Tis Hazari court that granted their custody to the crime branch team.
