Largest Ever Consignment of Counterfeit Indian Currency Confiscated in Bangladesh – The Diplomat

Networks for the provision and distribution of faux Indian foreign money notes (FICN) seem to have proliferated in Bangladesh over the previous 12 months, the fruits of a protracted sequence of developments originating greater than twenty years in the past.

Whereas some cities in Bangladesh had been long-known to be hubs of the counterfeit foreign money racket, the latest spurt within the illicit import of FICN into India via the border was a explanation for concern that has additionally set alarm bells ringing in a number of departments of the Indian authorities, an investigating official instructed The Diplomat.

On February 9, police in Dhaka seized numerous gunny baggage stuffed with a colossal amount of FICN and arrested some folks suspected to have been concerned within the racket. An official instructed the media that it was the biggest ever consignment of faux Indian foreign money to have been confiscated in Bangladesh.

Final 12 months in November, police officers had been quoted by the media in Dhaka as saying {that a} Lahore-based syndicate in Pakistan prints FICN, that are then transported to Bangladesh through Sri Lanka in containers loaded with marble stones. The consignments are hidden in “particular chambers” on the properties of syndicate members earlier than being smuggled into India.

The FICN growth in Bangladesh was unearthed months earlier following a probe by an Indian safety company, ensuing within the compilation of a report with intensive particulars of the facilities and folks concerned within the provide of the pretend foreign money notes from Bangladesh to India.

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The investigation confirmed the continuation of the phenomenon that started a long time in the past: FICN are printed in Pakistan after which illicitly imported into India both instantly via the border with Nepal and Bangladesh or via different routes linking Dubai, Bangkok, Hong Kong, and Colombo.

The investigation revealed that FICN are additionally being printed in denominations of (Indian) Rs 2,000 ($27), Rs 500, and Rs 200 in and across the vegetable wholesale market space of Kalyanpur in Dhaka.  These notes are ferried to the border at Kurigram and exported to India in small portions via a number of routes in Assam and West Bengal. Typically, packets of foreign money are smuggled by girls and in addition thrown over the border fence at night time. These are collected by accomplices on the Indian aspect.

Among the many kingpins whose names surfaced in the course of the probe had been Milan Sheikh and Umar Ali each of Rangpur in Bangladesh who’re staff of a transport firm named Suchana Transport in Kurigram. The primary distributors of FICN are Mohammad Rafiqul Islam, Mukul Sheikh, Asraf Ali, and Milan Sheikh. All of them function from the border districts of Rangpur and Kurigram.

The kingpins within the Indian border district of Dhubri in Assam had been recognized as Ashraf Ali, Abdul Gafur, and Jahangir Alom from one other border district, South Salmara. The identify of a functionary of a outstanding political occasion in Assam additionally figures within the report as being one of many beneficiaries of the smuggling of FICN.

In Dhubri, seizure of consignments by the Border Safety Power and arrests of brokers engaged within the smuggling will not be an unusual phenomenon.

“4 circumstances have been registered in Dhubri over the previous seven months. It seems that there are numerous gangs that function within the Indian border districts who will not be organized they usually obtain small consignments that are both thrown over the fence or imported via different methods,” Dhubri Superintendent of Police Abhijit Gurav instructed The Diplomat.

Officers who performed the probe had been of the agency view that it’s the printing of FICN at a number of authorities printing presses in Karachi, Multan, Quetta, Lahore, and Peshawar in Pakistan that’s the essential motive for the abundance of Indian counterfeit foreign money in Bangladesh. Their probe has additionally discovered that officers on the Pakistan Excessive Fee in Dhaka have been tasked to oversee the smuggling of the counterfeit currencies to India.

These developments are a sign of the Bangladesh authorities’s failure to curb the proliferation of Indian counterfeit foreign money, regardless of signing a memorandum of understanding with the Indian authorities to counter the menace.

Over the previous a number of years, many establishments have been drawing consideration to the menace posed by pretend foreign money to the Indian financial system. The matter acquired worldwide consideration in 2011 when the Worldwide Narcotics Management Technique Report of the U.S. State Division confirmed that an growing influx of counterfeit foreign money produced in Pakistan was being smuggled to India and that terrorist and prison networks used this cash to finance their actions within the nation.

In 2015, one other examine by the Indian Statistical Institute talked about that counterfeit foreign money value Rs 4 billion was in circulation in India at any given time with Rs 7 million coming into the system yearly.

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The findings of the Indian Statistical Institute appear to be at variance with the estimates of different Indian authorities departments. The federal government instructed Parliament in 2014 that there aren’t any dependable estimate of faux foreign money accessible.  Indian safety companies are of the view that the quantum of FICN in circulation within the nation has steadily elevated over time which might be a number of instances greater than the estimate arrived at by the Indian Statistical Institute.