Fake revenue stamps on sale

Rapid Action Battalion seized fake revenue stamps, court fee stamps and non-judicial stamps worth around Tk 30 lakh and arrested two persons including a stamp vendor yesterday from the capital's Motijheel area.
Rab also recovered Tk 41,118 from their possession.
Nurul Alam Majumder, 50, a stamp vendor (license no-67/2000) and Shakil Ahmed, 27, an employee of stamp vendor Dhiren Rajbongshi (license no-203/2001) were held from their stamp sales centres adjacent to the industries ministry in Motijheel.
Major MM Shafiqur Rahman of Rab-3 told The Daily Star that they arrested the two in guise of buyers and seized fake stamps at around 1:00pm.
He said when they sent one of their members in guise of fake stamp buyer to Nurul Alam, the Rab man settled that he (Nurul) would provide fake stamps worth Tk 12000 only at Tk 1200.
Major Shafiqur added, accordingly, stamp vendor Nurul took the Rab man to a place near the EXIM Bank in the area and brought out the fake stamps from a vault, and immediately Rab personnel detained Nurul.
He said they also arrested Shakil and seized the fake stamps from Nurul and Shakil's possession acting on Nurul's information.
Sources said Nurul was arrested six months ago on the same charge and being freed on bail, he got involved in fake stamp selling again.
Nurul said, "One Sarwar supplies the fake stamps every day and receive the money for the stamps at night."
Nurul added he bought each Tk 200 stamp at Tk 20, Tk 100 stamp at Tk 10, Tk 50 stamp at Tk 5, Tk 20 stamp at Tk 4 and Tk 5 stamp at Tk 3.
He said they used to sell fake revenue stamps, non-judicial stamps and court fee stamps to some selected buyers who then took the stamps to different places in the country.
Nurul said he again started selling fake stamps only around 15 days back and during the time he sold fake stamps worth around Tk 7 lakh.
However, he did not disclose where the stamps were printed.
Nurul told Rab that he used to serve as a cashier of Wapda and after his office hours he used to work at Dainik Bangla intersection as a typist. In 2001, he became acquainted with Sarwar who got him involved in fake stamp business.
Shakil said he was employed two months back by vendor Dhiran Rajbongshi and he (Shakil) did not know that these were fake ones as he was only asked to sell.
Major Shafiqur said the two arrestees are gang members of a fake stamps selling network.
He added they were trying to nab the others involved in this network.