A constable of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and a casual staff were arrested for allegedly stealing fake Indian currency notes with a face value of ₹1.5 crore from the agency’s high security strongroom at its headquarters on Lodhi Road in south Delhi.
Entered via AC duct
The case is shrouded in mystery as the suspects gained entry into the strongroom which has multiple layers of security and has biometric access control and CCTV cameras. An official said that the suspects tried to enter through the air conditioning duct.
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A senior NIA official claimed that the suspects, identified as Constable Sunil Kumar and pantry staff Ashok Kumar, mistook the fake notes to be genuine ones. The fake notes were seized after a raid in Gurugram in May this year. A Superintendent of Police who supervised the raids has been repatriated to his cadre.
An NIA spokesperson said: “An exhibit containing fake currency note was stolen from NIA strongroom last week by a constable and a pantry staff. The stolen exhibit was recovered soon thereafter. Appropriate legal action was taken in the matter. Delhi Police has registered a case and arrested both the accused.”
A senior Home Ministry official said that they were seized of the matter and the stolen fake currencies were recovered from the suspects.
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Officer confirms arrests
A senior Delhi Police officer confirmed the arrests and said that the case was registered at Lodhi Colony police station on August 30 under relevant Sections of the Indian Penal Code. “The accused have been identified as Sunil Kumar and Ashok Kumar. While Sunil works as a guard, Ashok is a pantry staff,” he said, adding that they were produced before the court and sent to judicial custody.
The incident comes in the wake of another case of corruption involving the premier anti-terror body. Last month NIA transferred three officials, including a SP rank officer on a complaint by a Delhi-based businessman who accused them of allegedly demanding ₹2 crore bribe to not frame him in the Falah-I-Insaniyat Foundation (FIF) terror funding case involving Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) chief Hafiz Saeed.
The Home Ministry official said that it was conducting an inquiry into the case.