Chennai fake-notes hauls points to B’desh border
Kolkata :Visitors to Chennai better be on their guard against counterfeit currency notes that are being circulated. Last week alone saw seizure of Fake Indian Currency Notes (FICN) worth Rs 5.5 lakh from four different places in the city. Four persons, three of whom are from West Bengal, were nabbed.“What is disturbing is the high quality of the counterfeit notes seized during the last four days. The bundle of currency notes of Rs 5.03 lakh were in denominations of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000. They are of superior quality and could be detected only with sophisticated gadgets available with banks,” said an investigating officer.
Col R Hariharan, a former Military Intelligence official , pointed out that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has been known to push counterfeit Indian currency notes through Nepal. “The Nepal border has been tightened now. Probably, the unguarded Bangladesh border has become the new entry point,” said Col Hariharan.
Friday night saw the police arresting Abdul Munaf following a dramatic car chase. Munaf led them to a house in suburban Chennai from where a bundle containing Rs 5.03 lakh was seized. But Rafeeq, leader of the gang, escaped the dragnet and the police is on the look out for him. “He had rented the house posing as an IT professional,” a police official said.
Police on Sunday seized 60 notes of Rs 500 denomination from two migrant labourers from West Bengal. Shaul Hameed and Hassan Usman from Murshidabad were trying to push the notes through road side eateries and cigarette vendors. Monday saw the police nabbing another youth from Murshidabad when he was trying to deposit FICN worth Rs 25,000 at the Sholinganallur branch of a nationalised bank.
Since the quality of the notes is similar in nature and the arrested persons were from Bengal, the police has concluded that the currencies were printed in Pakistan and pushed into India through Bangladesh. “There are thousands of migrant Bengali labourers in Chennai working in construction sites. They are vulnerable to any kind of temptation,” the official said.
A senior staff with a nationalised bank confirmed to The Pioneer that the quality of the counterfeit currency notes was of high standards. “Previously, we could identify FICNs by the texture and colour. The moment we touched it, we could tell if a currency note is fake. But not any more. Those printing the FICNs are doing a good job and for us, that is unnerving,” said the staff who did not want her name disclosed.
D Chandrabasu, a senior crime investigator who recently retired from the elite Central Crime Branch of Chennai Police, also said that counterfeit notes come to Chennai via Bangladesh. “The notes are printed in Pakistan with the sole aim of destabilising the Indian economy. They send bundles of currency notes through the Bangladesh’s border with India, a major portion of which remains unguarded and unprotected,” he said.
GG Chandrasekharan, a software engineer who visited the India-Bangladesh border in November last year with a group of youth, had told this correspondent that the border was unsafe and unguarded. “The India-Bangladesh border is as open and unguarded as the goal post of the Indian football team. More than 130 vacancies in the Border Security Force are yet to be filled. The living conditions of the BSF guards on duty are in a pathetic state. The border is a safe haven for smugglers,” Chandrasekharan had said.
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