Telgi's scam and its contours   

1994:  Telgi gets a stamp vendor license from The General Stamp Office, Mumbai.

1995: Seven cases of registered by Mumbai police against Telgi with regard to fake stamps. Telgi's stamp vendor license revoked. But not arrested by the police.

1994 onwards and uptil at least 2001: In strange auctions of old but sensitive stamp printing machines at government's printing press at Nasik Telgi bids highest and gets them. Later, Telgi bribes Nasik press officials to release sensitive stamp denomination numbers and uses those genuine numbers on his counterfeits.                                                   Fake stamps and stamp papers circulate in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and maybe other states also. Assisted greatly by the frequent occurrences of severe shortages at government counters.

2001, November: Karnataka police arrests Telgi and keeps him arrested. Karnataka police investigations bring out the multi-state nature of Telgi's racket.

2002: 1. Mahrashtra state government reluctantly initiates investigation of its own, but some senior police officials go slow and instead try to extract money from Telgi.

2002, June: About Rs 3,000 crore worth of counterfeit stamps and stamp papers seized by Pune police from Telgi's agents in Mumbai.

2003, March. Pune police's special investigation team (SIT) submits report to state government. State government would have sat on it had it not got leaked to the media next month.

2003, June: A Maharashtra state legislator arrested.

2003, September: 1. A Andhra Pradesh state legislator arrested. 2. Hearing social activist Anna Hazare's public interest litigation, the Bombay High Court orders the state government to appoint a senior officer to head the inquiry and to submit a report; retired additional director general of police S.S Puri appointed.

2003, November: 1. The SIT grills senior police officers including Mumbai's police commissioner. It even arrests a senior-level Crime Branch police officer and other police officers in Pune. 2. Puri submits his report to the Bombay High Court. 3. Sharma goes on leave. Later, replaced by P.S. Pasricha.