Aurangabad: HC grants conditional bail to key accused

AURANGABAD: The Aurangabad bench of the Bombay high court has granted conditional bail to the key accused in the counterfeit currency racket, paving way for his release after 11 months being behind bars.
While granting bail, justice VK Jadhav observed: “If printer and photocopy has been used to make the currency notes, the same would not attract the definition of counterfeiting as defined under section 28 of the IPC.”
On October 31, 2019, Pundaliknagar police got information from their sources following which three suspects were arrested and counterfeit currency notes of Rs 100 denomination were seized from them along with a printer. Samran alias Lucky Rashid Shaikh (27), a resident of Nehru Nagar, was dubbed as the kingpin of the racket.
Representing the key suspect, lawyer Govind Sharma contested that police have claimed that the seized notes were manipulated by using a computer, but the seizure panchanama does not have any computer.
Taking cognizance of the arguments, the court observed: “Though I find that printer came to be seized from the possession of the applicant. However, prima facie, in the given set of allegations I hardly find that section 489-A is attracted, which speaks that whoever counterfeits, or knowingly performs any part of the process of counterfeiting, any currency note or bank-note is liable for punishment under the provisions of section 489-A of the Indian Penal Code.”