India, June 22 -- A Thane court has convicted a 38-year-old man after he pleaded guilty in a 2018 fake currency and illegal firearms possession case, sentencing him to imprisonment already undergone during his nearly eight-year judicial custody.

Additional Sessions Judge VL Bhosale, on June 17, ordered the immediate release of the accused, Ashish Shivkumar Sharma, subject to the payment of a collective fine of Rs 8,600.

A copy of the court order was made available on Saturday.

Sharma had been in jail since July 11, 2018, following a police raid at Diva in Maharashtra's Thane district, where counterfeit notes with a face value of Rs 1,09,650, a scanner-printer, and an unlicensed firearm were seized.

The judge in the order noted, "The o...