GUWAHATI, June 9 - Pushing in of fake currency notes by anti-India elements came down after the change of currency notes following demonetization in November, 2016, but the phenomenon has started again. The National Investigating Agency (NIA), which is the nodal agency to deal with the problem, is coordinating with the State Police forces , Border Security Force (BSF) and other security agencies to deal with the problem.
Highly placed official sources told The Assam Tribune that before the change of the currency notes, most of the fake Indian currency notes, which were of high quality, originated in Pakistan and were sent to India through different routes. With the augmentation of security along the India-Pakistan border, the unscrupulous elements even routed fake currency notes through Bangladesh.
Though after the change of currency notes, the smuggling of fake currency notes to India came down, it has started picking up in recent times. �The unscrupulous elements engaged in such business took about a couple of years to make near perfect copies of Indian currency notes. Now the problem started emerging again and all out efforts are on by all the security agencies to deal with it,� sources added.
In recent times, most of the fake currency notes are coming from Bangladesh and those are mostly of Rs 2,000 and
Rs 500 denomination. It is believed that those fake currency notes were printed in Bangladesh only as they are not of very high quality as compared to the notes sent from Pakistan earlier. However, it is still not easy for a common person to detect it.
According to information available, most of the fake currency notes were smuggled to India through the Malda area in West Bengal and then sent to all parts of the country. Most such notes are sent usually to Northern and Western India where the business transactions are more than other parts of the country. However, there have been instances of smuggling of fake currency notes through the international border in Assam. The BSF personnel are kept on the alert to thwart such attempts and in several instances, substantial amount of such fake notes were seized.
Sources pointed out that recently, huge cache of fake Indian currency notes of the face value of Rs 7.67 crore were seized in Tribhuvan airport in Nepal and those were of high quality, which led to the belief that those were printed in Pakistan and routed through Nepal. A team of the NIA has already left for Nepal to coordinate with the security agencies of that country for a detailed investigation.
Sources said that for the state police forces, the Criminal Investigation Department is the nodal agency and the NIA is also arranging for training programmes wherever required for the CID personnel of the states so that they can detect and deal with such cases.
Official sources pointed out that availability of fake currency notes in the market is a major problem for the economy of any country and that is why, the Government of India has been trying its best to deal with the problem with proper coordination between all the security agencies.
