A viral post has been circulating on social media with a claim that bundles of Rs 2000 fake currency notes have been seized by the police in Gujarat’s Surat.

Caption: “बाजार से 2000 ने असली नोट गायब है और मोदी जी के गुजरात मे नकली नोटो अम्बार पकड़ा जाता है टेबिल पर रखे नकली नोटो को देख कर सूरत और मीडिया के होश उड़ गये जब इतनी खेप पकड़ी गई

नकली नोट पाकिस्तान में नहीं गुजरात में छपते हैं गुजरात के सूरत में पकड़ा गया बहुत बड़ा नकली नोटो का जखीरा… ये सारे पापी, गुंडे, बैंक लुटेरे, चोर, तड़ीपार आदि सब गुजरात में ही भरे पड़े हैं…

https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/so-easy-to-copy-rs-2-000-notes-make-56-of-all-seized-fake-currency-shows-ncrb-data-1636965-2020-01-15”

Translation: Real notes of Rs 2000 are missing from the market and the fake notes are being caught in Modi’s Gujarat. After seeing the fake notes on the table, Surat and the media were shocked that so much consignment was caught.

The following post, uploaded by Facebook user सत्यवादी R.K has been going viral on Facebook with more than 1000 shares till now. According to the claim in the caption, The Surat police has seized huge bundles of Rs 2000 fake currency notes and the entire city of Surat as well as the media was shocked to see this huge pile of fake currency laying on the table.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Truth

The image being circulated along with the caption was first uploaded in 2019 and is from Telangana, not Surat.

After running a quick reverse image search on google, it was established that the image was first tweeted in on Nov 2, 2019, by the Commissioner of Police of a city in Telangana called Khammam.

Shaik Madar, S/o Hussain is resident of Gowrigudem village of Sathupalli mandal and used to exchange Fake currency to innocent public by taking original currency from them since 20 years. Two cases were registered against him in Sathupalli Police station pic.twitter.com/bMPbeXpXq7

— cp khammam (@KhammamCp) November 2, 2019

Also, the India Today article that was mentioned by the user in the viral post also dates back to January. This suggests that the data is not recent and cannot be cited in today’s date.

Furthermore, the reverse google image search led back to quite a few news articles that were all published in November of 2019 and reported that a major fake currency racket was busted by the Telangana police in Khamman.

While the same viral image was not used by these media agencies, but it is clearly visible that the police officers remain the same in all the images. Only the angle of the image has changed.

You can read this article here.

Some other articles on the fake currency racket bust by the Telangana police can be read here and here.