Overzealous cops arrest youth, file fake foreign currency FIR without validation

Jammu Police style: FIR first, verification later

@ SUMIT SHARMA

JAMMU: Displaying utter non-professionalism, Jammu Police booked a youth on the charge of carrying fake US currency and arrested him and only later sent the seized four dollar notes to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to verify if they were genuine or not. It is turning out to be a nightmarish experience for Sahir Sharief, 25, a Bhaderwah-based youth currently in the lock up of Trikuta Nagar Police Station after he walked into an SBI branch in Jammu to exchange the dollars for Indian rupees.
Sahir Sharief, son of Ghulam Sharief, came to Jammu to exchange the US currency and was arrested from SBI’s Bahu Plaza branch when he gave the bank employees four notes of 100 US Dollars.
The bank manager got suspicious on seeing four 100 US dollar notes in the possession of a country bumpkin and accordingly alerted the police.
A police team reached the bank soon and took the youth into custody and booked him for possessing fake US currency without actually confirming whether it was fake or genuine.
However, the policemen in Trikuta Nagar Police Station were taken aback when during subsequent interrogation, the youth said that it was in fact genuine currency.
During questioning, the arrested youth told police that a tourist who visited Bhaderwah had given him the four notes and had taken Indian currency in exchange from him while assuring him of
making a profit. The youth said that he would not have walked into a bank if the dollars would have been fake.
“If the seized US currency notes are found to be genuine, then the FIR would be quashed,” said a senior police officer wishing not to be quoted.
But the said police officer did not comment when asked why the youth was put in the lock up without verifying about the genuineness of the foreign currency first.