A court in Nashik district of Maharashtra has acquitted Abdul Karim Telgi and others in stamp paper scam case, on Monday.

Telfgi who died in October last year was the alleged kingpin of a multi-crore counterfeit stamp paper scam. He died while serving sentence in the sensational scam which official agencies pegged  it at around Rs 15,000-crore. Hailing from Khanapur in Belagavi district of Karnataka, 56-year-old Telgi began his life as a vegetable and fruit vendor in trains.

After his education in the local Sarvodaya Vidyalaya, an English-medium school, he had obtained a B.Com degree from a college in Belagavi.

Later, he moved to Saudi Arabia and returned seven years later to Mumbai, where he allegedly developed links with the underworld.

He was arrested in 1991 on charges of cheating, but reportedly used his stay in the prison to learn the tricks of the trade from an expert forger. Telgi allegedly bribed his way out of jail.

—India Legal Bureau