In a major breakthrough, Police and Special task force (STF) on Friday busted a racket of the sale of duplicate NCERT books in the country that were being published here illegally since past 8 years.
In a joint operation of police and STF six printing press and illegally printed books of worth Rs 35 crore have been confiscated during a raid at a store in Partapur area of the district on Friday evening.
Another similar catch has also been made by the police in Gajraula area of district Amroha .
Working on a tip the team conducted raid at the store in Partapur and detained more than a dozen staff members working there while the owner of the press Sachin Gupta is still at large .
“We are interrogating the staff members and efforts are being made to arrest kingpin Sachin Gupta,” said Brijesh Singh, DSP STF adding that after preparing list of the confiscated books a case would be lodged by the STF.
The DSP informed further that approximately 9 lakh illegally printed books of NCERT have been confiscated from Partapur store . Also a same number of books have been confiscated from Gajraula store and its list would be made shortly after completing the proceedings in Meerut, said Singh.
NCERT books are published in its Delhi press only and it does not have any other printing press in Meerut or elsewhere, the DSP added.
Sachin Gupta , who is believed to be a relative of a leader from ruling party started printing these NCERT books illegally in their printing press here with the help of his aides . They gradually developed a distribution system across the country. They were doing it for past many years and developed a good chain of supply of their illegal business.