Abdul Karim Telgi, convicted in a multi-crore fake stamp paper scam in 2007, has died, authorities at Bangalore’s Victoria Hospital said.

Telgi was on ventilator support for the past six days. He was declared dead by the doctors at 3.55 pm on Thursday, 26 October.

SD Sharanappa, deputy commissioner of police, Bengaluru south, said Telgi’s death was communicated to the police on Thursday afternoon and the body would be handed over to the family after official procedures are completed.

Telgi’s lawyer, MT Nanaiah, said he was being treated for meningitis over the last six days at Victoria Hospital, but the treatment was not successful.

“He should’ve been admitted earlier,” Nanaiah told reporters.

In an official statement released earlier on Thursday, 26 October, Victoria Hospital said Telgi's condition was not improving. “He has multi-system failure, and has not shown any improvement... He is still on ventilator and other life support measures,” the statement read.

Abdul Karim Telgi was sentenced to 30 years imprisonment in 2007 for a fake stamp racket worth at least Rs 3,000 crore. A whopping fine of Rs 202 crore was also imposed on him.

He was serving his term at the Parappana Agrahara Central Jail in Bangalore. In July, there were allegations by a report submitted to the director inspector general (prisons) D Roopa, which said that he was receiving special treatment.

Seventeen years ago, a team of Bangalore police arrested Abdul Karim Telgi from Ajmer in Rajasthan. The interrogation that followed opened a Pandora’s box on one of India’s biggest scams.

It was a case that threatened to expose several big names in Indian bureaucracy and politics. However, the investigation fizzled out over the years.
What was the scam? The Telgi stamp paper scam is valued over Rs 30,000 crore. The scam had two aspects – creation of counterfeit documents and creating a scarcity of authentic documents. Telgi and his team created counterfeits of stamp papers, judicial court free stamps, revenue stamps, special adhesive stamps, foreign bills, brokers notes, insurance policies, share transfer certificates, insurance agency stamps and other legal documents. They also created an artificial scarcity of documents with the help of some officers of the Indian Security Press. Documents worth several crores were dispatched to addresses that did not exist, in order to create this scarcity.

HOW DID SCAM COME TO LIGHT? It was the arrest of two men who were transporting fake stamp papers that snowballed into one of the biggest scams in India. These two men were arrested from Bangalore’s Cottonpet on August 19, 2000, based on a tip off. During the interrogation, the two men spilled the beans about a network supplying fake documents, resulting in raids across Bangalore. During the raids, the police recovered fake stamp papers and other legal documents worth over Rs nine crore. In the course of the investigation, Telgi’s name came up, who till then was one of the suspects.

THE INVESTIGATION: It was 86 days since the arrest of Telgi when team STAMPIT took over the investigation. As per rules, if the chargesheet was not filed before 90 days of the arrest, the accused was liable to get bail. Once the chargesheet was filed, Telgi was sent away to judicial custody, which meant that the team could not arrest him. The team moved the court to get permission to question Telgi in prison, which came after a delay.

INTERROGATING TELGI: Telgi was a tough nut to crack. He spoke little and replied only with limited details. The STAMPIT even conducted a narco analysis on Telgi in the hope of getting some leads. Despite being drugged, he appeared fully awake, remember investigators. Despite this desperate attempt to probe leads, Telgi did not reveal anything.

TELGI RAN SCAM FROM PRISON: Though he was locked up, he continued to run his operations from behind the bars. STAMPIT’S investigations revealed that he was using mobile phones even in the early 2000s to run operations. Investigators said when they tried to tap his phones Telgi knew and changed numbers constantly. Every permission to tap a new phone number took time and principle accused was aware of the loopholes. In 2017, the high court convicted two officials for supplying mobile phones to Telgi inside the prison.

Probe & DEDICATED WEBSITE: TAMPIT was one of the first agencies in the country to launch a website to disseminate and obtain information about the case. The probe itself had three parts – investigation of the scam, investigation of operations from the prison and probe of Rs 55 lakhs recovered from Belgaum, which reportedly belonged to Telgi. A website named www.stampit.info was launched about the three cases.

CBI TAKES OVER: While the STAMPIT was gathering more names and evidence, a decision was made to transfer the case to the CBI. The rationale was that the premier agency was in any case investigating cases against Telgi, but the probe did not go beyond what was established by the STAMPIT. None of the big fish named by Telgi were ever pursued.