Who Is Abdul Karim Telgi? Know About Scam 2003: The Telgi Story, Fake Stamp Scam And More

'Scam 2003: The Telgi Story' chronicled Abdul Karim Telgi's rise to power as the brains behind of one of India's biggest financial frauds.

Gagandev Riar plays the lead character in the drama, which is an adaptation of Sanjay Singh's 'Reporter Ki Diary'.

New Delhi: 'Scam 2003: The Telgi Story' by Hansal Mehta is a sequel to the hit 2020 web series Scam 1992. The first instalment was extremely popular and even took the top spot on IMDB's "Top 10 Indian Web Series List". The season chronicled Abdul Karim Telgi's rise to power as the brains behind one of India's biggest financial frauds, which involved 12 different states. Telgi, who was born in a Karnataka town, later made tens of thousands of crores through "stamp scams".

Gagandev Riar plays the lead character in the drama, which is an adaptation of Sanjay Singh's 'Reporter Ki Diary'. Applause Entertainment and StudioNEXT collaborated with SonyLIV to produce this show. The series was released on September 2. 

Who Is Abdul Karim Telgi?

In 1961, Telgi was born in Khanapur, a small panchayat town in Karnataka that shares a border with Maharashtra. When Telgi was younger, his father, an employee of the Indian Railways, passed away. He had to start working to support himself after his father passed away. During this time, he provided for his family while still paying for his schooling. Telgi was forced to work odd jobs, such as selling food on trains.

He travelled to Saudi Arabia to earn money. However, he soon went back and moved to Mumbai to start a career as a travel agent. To labourers looking for work in Gulf nations, he sold fabricated immigration clearance paperwork. In 1991, he was detained on forgery and cheating allegations. However, he got involved in another scam after completing his term.

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Stamp Paper Scam: How Was It Done?

Investigations reveal that Telgi's team bought access to machinery and printing supplies to produce the false papers, as well as bribed employees of the Indian Security Press in Maharashtra to help create an artificial shortage of documents. Telgi's scam, which started in 1992, included two elements: one was to create documents with fake stamps and the second was to create a shortage of stamp paper so that Telgi would have a good opportunity to supply the fake. To meet a range of legal requirements at the time, stamp papers—which he began to forge—were necessary. 

He acquired the old machinery that Nashik Security Press had shut down and was being sold off at auction to create the stamp papers. Along with regular people, banks, brokerage firms, and insurance corporations were among his customers. Without the help of police officers, the racket would not have survived. Even when it was falling apart, they continued to offer support. As part of the investigation, a few police officers were also detained.

How Was Abdul Karim Telgi Caught?

According to a report by The Quint, on August 19, 2000, two guys were arrested in Cottonpet, Bengaluru, while smuggling fake stamp sheets. The men revealed the scheme during the interrogation, which sparked raids throughout Bengaluru that found more than Rs 9 crore worth of fake stamp paper and other legal documents. Abdul Karim Telgi, however, was only one of the suspects who had fled at this point.

According to a report in The Indian Express, Telgi recorded a small amount of revenue on his tax filings for each year between 1996 and 2003, but a tax tribunal in Bengaluru found that he had collected a "huge unaccounted sum from the racket of counterfeit stamp papers" in 2010. In the assessment year 1996–1997 alone, the Tax Department evaluated his income to be Rs. 4.54 crore, of which Rs. 2.29 crore was "unaccounted."

In November 2001, Telgi was eventually apprehended when the police received a tip that he was making his way to Ajmer, Rajasthan, for a religious pilgrimage. When the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed a charge sheet against Telgi in 2004, he was transferred to prison and the SIT was unable to properly question him.  

According to The Quint, Telgi allegedly continued his operations from prison, and in 2017, the High Court found two prison guards guilty of supplying Telgi with cell phones. In the end, Telgi was given a 30-year prison term with hard labour in 2006. A further 13 years were added to his sentence in 2007. Additionally, he was ordered to pay a Rs 202 crore fine.

Telgi had a reputation for leading a lavish lifestyle, which included frequenting dance bars. Meningitis took his life suddenly in 2017, which was made worse by ongoing medical conditions like diabetes and hypertension. After experiencing various organ failures, Telgi passed away at Victoria Hospital in Bengaluru. On December 31, 2018, one year after his passing, a Maharashtra session court freed Telgi and seven other people in the Stamp Paper Scam case. P R Deshmukh, the court's first-class judge, ruled that there was insufficient evidence to convict the accused person.