You must remember the web series ‘Scam 1992: The Harshad Mehta Story‘, in which the story of Harshad Mehta Scam was shown. Harshad Mehta had done a scam of about 5 thousand crores, after knowing about which everyone was shocked. Hansal Mehta, who created it, is now bringing another web series called ‘Scam 2003 – The Telgi Story’. In this he has shown the story of Abdul Karim Telgi. Telgi’s scam was about 6 times bigger than Harshad Mehta’s. The most important thing about this scam is that after it was revealed, the government had to declare all the fake stamps printed under this scam as legal. After all, what is the compulsion of the government? Let us know how Telgi did a fraud of 30 thousand crore rupees.
The responsibility of the family had to be taken in childhood itself.
Abdul Karim Telgi had scammed the stamp paper. He earned so much money from this scam, which cannot be estimated even today. Abdul’s story begins in Karnataka, where Telgi was born to a 4th-class railway employee. There were 8 children in the family and the father died in childhood. After this, the responsibility of the entire family fell on Telgi’s shoulders. His father was in the Railways, so there was some recognition, with the help of which Telgi started selling fruits and vegetables at the railway station itself and raised the family.
The game of forgery started from here
When he grew up, he saw that many people go to Gulf countries for jobs. Telgi also went to Gulf and worked there for 7 years. After that he returned to India around 1990 and started sending people to the Gulf by making fake passports and visas here. Telgi was earning a lot from this forgery, but one day his secret got exposed and the police arrested him. After this Telgi was sentenced to jail. In jail, Telgi met a man named Ratan Soni. He told Telgi how useful stamp paper is and how big a fraud can be done with it.
Telgi got the idea to earn billions from jail
From jail, Telgi got such an idea, which made it rain money. As soon as he came out, Telgi started his preparations to execute the stamp paper fraud. After that he came to know that there is a Nashik Printing Press at the Nashik railway station where he used to sell fruits and vegetables, where stamps are printed. Telgi somehow increased the identity of the people there and bought the old machine at auction. Bought them and got them repaired and started printing fake stamps.
More than 300 people were kept for selling stamps
Now it was the turn to spread these stamp papers across the country. For this, Telgi hired around 300 MBAs. His job was that he used to go from place to place and sell these stamps. These stamps were sold in corporate, tehsils and even in the stock market. Strong discounts were given while selling these stamps, due to which people used to buy them immediately. Telgi had spread its network to about 70 cities of the country. For 10 years, he printed and sold a lot of stamps and earned crores and billions of rupees. After that, how much wealth was there, you can guess from the fact that in the 90s, he went to a dance bar and spent about 93 lakh rupees on a dancer. From then on, he suddenly came into everyone’s eyes and people started talking about him.
Arrested in the year 2000, but continued to run the business from jail
In the year 2000, Bangalore Police got a tip that fake stamp papers were being sent somewhere in trucks. When the police raided, they found a lot of fake stamp papers. After investigation many names came up, one of which was Telgi’s. When efforts started to nab everyone, Telgi ran away. Meanwhile, once Telgi went to Ajmer’s dargah, the police already came to know about him. After reaching there, the police arrested him. When this matter was investigated, its amount kept increasing every day. Telgi also kept on taking the police on here and there. He used to get all the facilities even in jail, so he continued to run his business from jail as well. It is said that from 1992 to 2002, a stamp scam of about 30 thousand crore rupees was done.
Surprising names taken in narco test
After this Telgi’s narco test was also done, in which he took the names of many policemen and politicians. Names of big leaders of Delhi were also taken. After that this case was handed over from SIT to CBI. However, due to lack of evidence against anyone, no action was taken against them. Action was taken only on some people who were with Telgi. The name of a head constable also came up in this case, who used to earn 9000 rupees every month, when he was raided, a property worth 100 crores came out. When an investigation was done against another policeman, his property worth 200 crores was found. It was said that Abdul Karim Telgi did not give bribe to the people, but used to keep big leaders and policemen on salary.
The court gave the biggest punishment in history
Till date it is not known that where was Telgi’s printing press, where all these stamp papers were printed. In 2007, the court sentenced on this matter. Many of Telgi’s associates were sentenced to 6-6 years and Telgi was sentenced to 30 years in jail and fined Rs 202 crore. This is the first time in the history of the court that such a huge fine has been imposed on someone. Telgi died in jail in 2017, on which many questions were also raised and allegations of conspiracy were also made. It is said that when Telgi was arrested, after that medical tests revealed that he had AIDS and diabetes. However, Telgi’s lawyers accused the police administration that Telgi was injected with AIDS. Telgi died in 2017 due to multiple organ failure. The biggest surprise in this case is that the investigation took place for so many years, but it is not known with whom Telgi had a connection in the printing press. No major leader or police officer was punished.
The government has declared this scam as legal!
If seen, this scam was not made legal, but all the fake stamps sold under this scam were made legal. Now the question arises that what was the compulsion of the government that the fake stamp had to be declared legal. Actually, stamps are used for all the legal works or agreements in the country. From 1992 to 2002, most of the stamps in the country were fake stamps of Telgi. In such a situation, if they were declared illegal, then all the marriages, all the contracts, all the land-property agreements, insurance everything would have become illegal during that time. In such a situation a big problem would arise. This is the reason why the government had to legalize the fake stamps sold under this scam.
