New Delhi: There have been several scams not just in the history of India but also that of the world, with fraudsters swindling money from common people on false pretexts. While our country has seen its fare share of scams, few could compete with the one pulled off by a certain Abdul Karim Telgi in terms of the magnanimity of the fraud. He began his journey from humble beginnings and went on to perpetrate one of the biggest scams in the Indian history. In this article, we will take a look at the life and crimes of Abdul Karim Telgi.
Abdul Karim Telgi: The man who began by selling fruits and vegetables
Born on July 29, 1961, in Karnataka’s Belgaum, Abdul Karim Telgi lost his father, who worked in the Indian Railways, at a very young age. Telgi paid for his education at an English medium school by selling fruits and vegetables on trains and eventually moved to Saudi Arabia. He returned to India after seven years and began a counterfeiting career with the original focus being on fake passports. Also, he started a business to send labourers to Saudi Arabia and opened a company for that, Arabian Metro Travels. Eventually, Telgi moved on to counterfeiting stamp papers.
What was Telgi’s Stamp Paper Scam?
Beginning in 1992, the Stamp Paper Scam, also known as the Telgi Scam was a financial scam. The scam included a sophisticated counterfeit stamp paper racket which was present in several states in our country and the value of the scam was more than Rs 30,000 crore. The team of Telgi created an artificial dearth of documents and obtained printing material and machinery to create fake papers.
One aspect of the scandal which was concerning was that it needed the involvement of many police officers and other government employees. The scam began to unravel in the late 1990s and Telgi was arrested in November 2001. Several high-profile government officials and politicians were also arrested in the case. Telgi was sentenced to 30 years of imprisonment and a hefty fine amounting to Rs 202 crore. He died on October 23, 2017, at Bengaluru’s Victoria Hospital and ironically, on December 31, 2018, the Nashik session court in Maharashtra acquitted Telgi and seven others in the Stamp Paper Scam case.
Abdul Karim Telgi, born in 1961, orchestrated one of India’s largest financial scams involving counterfeit stamp papers. Starting with humble beginnings selling fruits and vegetables, he later counterfeited passports and expanded into a vast criminal enterprise. knowledge Knowledge News, Photos and Videos on General Knowledge
