Mumbai: The sessions court on Thursday convicted Shabbir Shaikh, a close aide of Abdul Karim Ladsab Telgi, the mastermind of the fake stamp paper scam, for being part of a criminal conspiracy involving printing and circulating the counterfeit stamp papers.
The court sentenced Shaikh to five years imprisonment and imposed a fine of ₹16,000 after he pleaded guilty in one of the cases registered against him and Telgi with the Worli police in 2009.
As per the prosecution case, the duo was booked for hatching a criminal conspiracy and had prepared fake revenue stamps. Shaikh, who is said to be Telgi’s close accomplice, has been in prison since October 2002 whereas Telgi died in jail in October 2017.
In the present case, the police had filed a chargesheet in 2014 but the case remained pending for trial.
“Shaikh was arrested on October 28, 2002 in a case registered at Bund Garden police station in Pune. Since then, he has been in custody. However, the present crime was registered in 2009. A chargesheet was filed on September 12, 2014. Record shows that Shabbir was not arrested during the course of investigation,” the sessions court noted.
When the case was scheduled for framing of charges, Shaikh pleaded guilty and said he was behind the bars for the last 20 years and was deprived of the company of his wife and son. He also appealed the court for leniency.
According to the prosecution case, Telgi had purchased printing machinery being sold in scrap from the India Security Press at Nashik, printed counterfeit stamp papers and sold the same at discounted rates between 1993 and 2002.
The scam that ran into hundreds of crores of rupees was unearthed with Telgi’s arrest in 2001. Subsequent investigations revealed he had links with politicians and senior police and other government officers. In all, around 40 criminal cases were registered against Telgi in 11 states, including Maharashtra.
