NIA seizes fake money in hard-to-spot 'Karachi print'

Kolkata/Howrah: The arrest of a suspected fake currency courier, Prasenjit Sinha, by the NIA on Friday has again brought the focus on how the ISI-backed modules have been pumping fake currency into the country. The notes, all of Rs 500 denomination, seized from Sinha were of "Karachi print", which were made in Pakistan and could hardly be distinguished from original currency.
Sinha's arrest comes exactly a month after two Murshidabad residents, suspected to be working for ISI-backed modules and part of a fake currency racket, were picked up by the Ahmedabad police.
"The notes seized from Sinha show it is not printed in Bangladesh, which does not have the technology to print such high-quality currency," said an NIA officer. The consignment seized from Sinha has the face value of Rs 5.8 lakh.
According to an NIA officer, the currency entering India through Bangladesh can be categorized into two segments. While 'Bangladesh print' notes are good look-alikes, but it is easy to detect those. The difficult-to-spot ones are the 'Karachi print'. "The fake notes which can only be detected by RBI officials are the Karachi prints. They even fake the security threads," the officer said.
An investigation has revealed that Sinha, who is a courier, received the consignment from a place in Malda and was headed for Chennai when he was intercepted. "The currency was procured from Bangladesh, but the notes were not printed there," the officer said. Sinha, suspected not to have any other role than that of a courier, told investigators that they are not given details of receivers. He delivered packages to persons with "a special code and specific sign", an officer said, adding that for each consignment, Sinha was paid Rs 5,000. NIA officers, who are now tracing the currency source, said Sinha had made several trips to the Indo-Bangla border and he might have been to Bangladesh.
The two Murshidabad residents, Mofizul Sheikh and Shabuddin Sheikh, who were arrested from Ahmedabad last month had spilled the beans on three others, Babu Sheikh, Ashanuddin Sheikh and Aaftan Sheikh, residents of Ghansipur in Bengal. "They were part of the racket in Bangladesh and Pakistan. We are checking if Sinha was also part of that network," the officer said. Another officer pointed out Malda had been a transit route for fake currency into India, the most common point being Farakka. The gangs also functioned in places such as Kaliachak and Gajol.