|
|
|
| |
Chief Minister S.M. Krishna looks
at the bogus stamps |
Bangalore: Forging the government's seal of approval turned out
to be a most profitable venture for counterfeiters. Karim Lala alias Ahmed
Kareem and his 40-strong gang ran a flourishing business selling forged
stamp papers and bank documents until the police caught up with Lala in
faraway Ajmer on November 7.
Owner of import-export firm Metro Corporation in Mumbai, Lala ran a racket
that had its bases in Belgaum, Shimoga and Mangalore in Karnataka as well
as in some pockets of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal. He traded
in fake land registration documents and bank loan papers, some worth Rs
5,000 each. His men used a franking machine to emboss stamps on various
documents, to imitate the logos of original government stamp papers.
|
|
|
| |
Karim Lala alias Ahmed Kareem
|
This was not the first such expose. In August 2000, the police raided
Sai Enterprises in Bangalore, seizing papers worth Rs 12 crore and Rs
35 lakh in cash. Ten people were arrested, including Sri Sai an "A"
class stamp vendor. But the forgers were undeterred. They offered a mixture
of fake and genuine papers and deceived even expert dealers like Volvo,
Britannia, ABB, BPL, Siemens and Wipro. As a precaution, stamp vendors
are allowed to sell papers worth Rs 25,000 a day. But for Lala that was
no hindrance-he printed bogus vendor licences too.
-Stephen David
The Golden Pumpkin
Noam Chomsky, MIT professor and America's most voluble dissenter, spent
early November lecturing the trendy Left in India. For the record, he
was campaigning against the US bombing of Afghanistan. In Kerala, CPI(M)
cadre gave him a rousing welcome at the newly built E.M.S. Namboodiripad
Academy in Thiruvananthapuram. Chomsky began with a ritualistic denunciation
of George W. Bush, globalisation and so on. Then came the Q&A session
and things got hot. Chomsky scoffed at communist nostalgia, saying, "How
can one call the USSR a socialist state? It exploited its people by calling
itself socialist while practising state capitalism." CPI(M) leaders
in the front rows turned red. Chomsky wasn't done yet. India, he said,
was a terrorist state because "I don't think the Kashmir movement
is terrorist. It is a resistance movement." Did anyone hear of the
Taliban advertising on the Al Jazeera network for a pr person?
 Signposts
APPOINTED: R. Chidambaram, atomic scientist, as principal scientific
adviser to the government of India. He takes over from A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.
ARRESTED: Harshad Mehta and his two brothers in Mumbai, for sale
of over 27 lakh blue chip shares to their benami firms.
 LISTED:
Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited, on the New York Stock Exchange, on
November 8. It is the fourth Indian scrip to trade on Wall Street.
RESTORED: Bhikkhuni, the Buddhist nuns' order, in Sri Lanka.
Established in the 3rd century b.c., the ancient order allows nuns to
perform religious ceremonies.
BLACKLISTED: 66 NGOs, by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment,
for "unsatisfactory performance".
|
CURRENT
ISSUE NOV 26, 2001
){kind=link}