New Delhi, Nov 21 (IANS): A Lucknow court on Tuesday sentenced three persons to imprisonment to four to five years in the 2021 Ghaziabad fake currency seizure case.

An NIA spokesperson said that the NIA special judge in Lucknow has sentenced three accused -- Murad Alam, Tausif Alam and Sariful Islam -- to prison, in which the NIA had earlier charge-sheeted four accused for supply of high quality fake Indian currency notes (FICN) smuggled in from Bangladesh.

The three accused were convicted on Tuesday, who pleaded guilty before the NIA Special Judge.

The official said that all three have been sentenced to four and five years of rigorous imprisonment (RI) along with fine, or one month simple imprisonment in lieu thereof, for separate offences under various sections of IPC and UA(P) Act. The sentences will run concurrently.

The case was initially registered by ATS, UP, in December 2019, following the recovery of high quality FICN, having total face value of Rs 2.49 lakh from the possession of Alam. The NIA had taken over the investigations after re-registering the case in February 2020.

NIA investigations had revealed that Alam had received the FICN consignment from Tausif Alam and had carried it for delivery to Shahnawaj Ansari, the official said.

The consignment was supplied to Tausif Alam by the accused Islam, who had contacts in Bangladesh from where he used to procure the fake currency, the official said.

"Probe had established that all the accused persons were members of the FICN Supply network and the fake currency was purportedly smuggled from across the border. The accused had conspired to smuggle, sell and procure the FICN, and had kept it in their possession before further circulating and supplying it to persons or consignees in different parts of the country, including Alam, a resident of Ghaziabad and Ansari, hailing from Bihar's Purnea in the instant case," the official added.