Abdul Kaim Telgi, a journey of a fruit and vegetable seller in the railway station to a Mumbai’s multi-crore counterfeit stamp papers scammer. He became the mastermind for the stamp paper scam and ran that scam empire till 2003. He executed a scam worth Rs. 32000 crore and was imprisoned for 30 long years in the year 2003, and died during his jail tenure in the year 2017 due to multiple illness.

Background

Abdul Karim Telgi belonged to a middle-class family, of a 4th grade railway officer in Khanapur of Belgaum district, Karnataka.

He was born in 1961 and his father was a dignified railway officer. And due to his father’s work, the family resided in Khanapur and were living a simple life of honor. When Telgi was around 7 or 8 years, his father died of illness, leaving the whole family behind him. Telgi had two other brothers, Abdul Rahim and Abdul Azim.

The family faced a financial crisis during those times, but they managed to sell fruits at the Khanapur railway station to earn a decent living. In the 1970s the Khanapur railway station served as the halting point for 12 trains and the family of three brothers managed to sell fruits, vegetables, peanuts and chikki to the passengers on board. He managed to complete his schooling from the Sarvodaya Vidyalaya. After completing his studies, Telgi completed his BCom degree from the Gogte College of Commerce.  

After passing out, he started his search for a job and landed up in Mumbai. He then joined as a sales executive in Fillix India, but due to his poor performance he had to leave that job. After this he joined as a manager in Kishan Guest House in Colaba, South Mumbai. He always wanted to earn more money in less time and effort, and he found it could be done if he managed to go to the Middle-east and earn.

He then went to Saudi Arabia in the 80’s to make quick money, and stayed there for seven long years, post which he realized that he couldn’t stay there for long and moved back to Mumbai. He was a believer of quick money making through less efforts and short cut methods, and he then started finding out easy ways to do so. It was during this time he managed to develop links with the underworld, politicians and the bureaucrats. Telgi then started having inclination towards the tourism business as he had seen a lot of travel agents strike gold by sending people to Saudi Arabia for employment. Then he decided to become a travel agent himself and he started his own travel agency named Arabian Metro Travel Company. 

Since he always wanted quick money, he absorbed himself in a fraudulent activity of fake passport making. Since working hard and long, with honesty and sincerity, was not Telgi’s style, he began to cheat and defraud his clients. He started making fake passports and did forgery with the documents to export people to the Middle East who had questionable credentials.

His team would create a plethora of fake documents that would facilitate peoples’ smooth passage at the airport even if their passport had an ECR (emigration check required) stamp or other issues that could raise red flags for immigration officials. And he managed to use his contacts to illegally send those people abroad and earn good money out of it. More and more people came to know about him and approached him for their willingness to go abroad and paid him good money for doing so.

This activity was going smooth for him and he was making big money also, but this didn’t continue to go smoothly and flawlessly for a long time. There was a time when most people’s passport and immigration clearance process got stuck and he was not able to send them abroad. It was during this time when most of the people filed a suit against him in the year 1991.

Due to this VISA racket crime, he was sent to jail in 1993 and there he met another criminal named Mr. Ratan Soni. Ratan Soni was again a fraudster who was jailed for his fraud in the indian stock exchange. It was in the jail, when the two criminal minds gave birth to a big fraudulent idea which was later known as one of the biggest scams in the indian history.

 The Beginning of the Stamp Paper Fraud

The jail became the cradle of crime for Telgi, where he learnt invaluable lessons of crime and big money-making strategies. This man, Ratan Soni once told Telgi that if he had to do a crime to make money, he should do it for crores of money and not for just a few thousands. In the jail itself, they came closer and started exploring big ideas for profitable ventures.

Soni then explained to Telgi that one of the most unmonitored or neglected government departments was the stamp-paper office. If only they could start counterfeits of stamps, it would be like creating a parallel economy and printing almost a proxy currency. The profit would not be measured in crores but in crores of crores. Ratan Soni told Telgi that he had got various contacts with the Government officials, politicians and the underworld. What else one would need to execute a big scam.

In the 80’s, stamp papers were needed for a host of legal purposes, so both Telgi and Soni decided to forge stamp papers and sold them initially for less than Rs. 100 a stamp paper to the interested parties.  They both very well knew that they could achieve what they wanted, only by, greasing the palms of greedy politicians for their vested interests. Telgi approached Samajwadi Janata Party MLA Anil Gote for arranging a meeting with Mr. Vilasrao Deshmukh, who was the revenue minister in Maharashtra’s Congress government. In 1994, he acquired a licence for stamp paper and opened an office in Mint Road Mumbai. He then opened many bank accounts and offices in Mumbai to execute the scam.

He used his contacts to purchase the scrapped machineries or the one that were put to auction by the Indian Security Press at Nasik. Since he had high level connections at the Indian Security Press, he ensured that these machineries were purchased by him only and later used for his fraudulent activities. He was smart enough to ensure that he purchased all the raw materials used by the Indian Security Press. He purchased the same Dye for printing and the same stationary used by the Nasik Press for his stamp printing, to ensure the same look and feel of his counterfeit stamp. So, he managed to use the same printing technology used by the government of india and thus started printing the same replica of the original stamp papers. 

He established a wide network of vendors for the distribution of the stamp papers. He used to attract vendors by offering them a commission of 20% to 30% to sell their stamps, wherein the government gave only 3% to the vendors. So, he could lure the vendors and get his distribution done. It was even very difficult for the vendors to identify which were fake or original stamp papers, due to the same printing technology used by Telgi.

He had more than 350 agents who sold his duplicate stamp papers of various denominations in bulk to banks, insurance companies, stock brokerage firms and corporates. In order to grow his business, he managed to artificially create a scarcity of the stamp paper and sold his own stamp paper in its place. He did this by diverting the route of the original stamp paper to a fake delivery address and thus blocking the original stamp paper. And hence the market had more of Telgi’s stamp paper and less of the original stamp paper. He managed to get fake stamps for the judicial court fee, non-judicial stamps, revenue stamps, notarial stamps, insurance agency stamps, share transfer certificate stamps and every possible fake stamp.  

He was growing in his business with a presence in 13 states, 74 cities with more than 170 offices, and 900 plus employees. He had almost around 350 vendors to sell his stamps and had more than 120 bank accounts to manage the money. He was growing his business in many folds, and it was in August, 2000 when the police got one tip regarding the fake stamp papers.

The lid was blown off the stamp paper racket in 2000, when two of his couriers were caught transporting the stamp papers in Karnataka. The interrogation led the police to Telgi; they started tapping his phone calls to investigate further and understand the size of the scam. Later in 2001, police had information that Telgi would be going to Ajmer and they planned his arrest. And finally, the mastermind of the stamp paper scam was arrested in 2001. 

Legal Actions on Abdul Karim Telgi

After his arrest in Ajmer, a case was registered by the Bund Garden police in Pune in June 2003. The police recovered all the fake stamps. The then government formed a Special Investigation Team (SIT) headed by some senior officers. 

The SIT mentioned in its report that there was involvement of some of the officials from the India Security Press (ISP), Nasik in the transfer of the printing technologies used by the ISP. However, no action was taken against them. Looking at the big volume of the scam, proper investigation was carried out by the SIT and it was highlighted that the scam was running since 1994. SIT settled on the final amount of Rs. 32000 Crores after introspecting the case. They also discovered that big political leaders, influential officers from the Indian Security Press were involved in the scam. And one such big name of Mr. Anil Gote, who was the MLA from Dhule came out, and he was put to bars for 4 years.

But later all charges against him were revoked. Owing to the fact that many big personalities were involved, a NARCO test was conducted on Telgi, where he mentioned a few big names. He mentioned Mr. Chaggan Bhujbal, who was the then Deputy CM of Maharashtra and Mr. Sharad Pawar, the then Union Agricultural Minister. But soon there was a big controversy over the NARCO test, stating that Telgi was conscious during the test. And hence these names were erased from the scam and investigation, and the case was then transferred to the CBI for future investigation.

The key players’ names which got highlighted during the investigation were of the MLAs, Ministers of Andhra Prasad, Mumbai Police Commissioner, Former Joint Commissioner of Police (crime branch), former Deputy Commissioner of Mumbai Police and the then suspended IPS Officer. CBI registered many cases in this connection.

Abdul Karim Telgi was convicted in 2006 after he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 30 years in prison along with a big fine of Rs. 202 crores. However, his imprisonment was later reduced to 13 years.

He was known to sabotage the system and received preferential VVIP treatment in the central jail of Bengaluru. Various controversies were involved with the imprisonment also. He was suffering from various diseases and succumbed to death before his tenure of imprisonment. He died in 2017, and after his death, all charges and allegations upon him and others involved in the scam were withdrawn and all were released. 

But many stories remain unearthed with his death relating to the scam, as Telgi often said that he was a very small player in the scam, and many big politicians and bureaucrats were involved in the execution of this scam.

A movie by the name; “Mudrank The Stamp” was filmed based on his story and the scam.