Mumbai, Jan 15 (PTI) Four persons were sentenced to five years of rigorous imprisonment by an NIA court here on Wednesday in a case related to the possession of fake Indian currency notes, according to an official statement.

In total five accused were arrested in the case.

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"National Investigation Agency (NIA) secured the first conviction of 2025 with the special NIA court, Mumbai, sentencing four accused to five years of imprisonment in a case relating to possession of fake Indian currency notes on Wednesday," it said.

The case was initially registered by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), Nagpur, on January 16, 2020, where fake currency notes of face value Rs 13,67,500 was seized and four accused were arrested.

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NIA subsequently took over the investigation and registered the case on February 10, 2020. Following a probe, the anti-terror agency filed a charge sheet on April 7, 2020, against the four arrested accused -- Lalu Khan, Mahesh Bagwan, Randheer Singh Thakur and Ritesh Raghuwanshi.

One accused, Sohrab Hosen, a resident of Malda in West Bengal, was shown as wanted in the charge sheet, the statement said.

NIA arrested Hosen on June 29, 2020, and filed a supplementary charge sheet on September 24 that year. Investigation revealed that Hosen was dealing in the smuggling of fake notes and Phensedyl cough syrup across the India-Bangladesh border, it said.

Hosen died in Lucknow prison, the statement said.

All the other accused pleaded guilty before the court, which sentenced them to five years of imprisonment and imposed a fine of Rs 3,000 on each of them.

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