Author: Vishwa Mohan
Publication: The Times of India
Date: April 14, 2007
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1907399.cms
Pakistan continues to be the hub of printing
and circulation of fake Indian currency despite the emergence of a couple
of other countries including Thailand and Bangladesh on the scene of late.
CBI on Tuesday arrested an Indian national,
Zulfiqar Ali, who revealed that Karachi, Lahore and Quetta were still being
used by Dawood Ibrahim's network as major centres to pump in counterfeit notes.
Ali was nabbed at IGI Airport when he landed
from Lahore. The arrest was made on the basis of a 'look-out circular' issued
against him in connection with a probe into the fake Indian currency notes
(FICNs) case registered by the agency last year.
CBI, during Ali's interrogation, found that
he was part of a network involved in printing and circulating FICNs from Pakistan.
The racket was being managed by one Qaisar,
an associate of Dawood. Sources in the agency said that the case was registered
following an input from Directorate of Revenue Intelligence which had caught
two Indian nationals last year with huge quantity of FICNs.
Their interrogation revealed Ali's whereabouts,
whose arrest is being considered important to know more about the racket,
which is being run with the help of ISI, they added.
The modus-operandi of the gang, as revealed
by Ali and Abbas, appear to be similar to what Indian intelligence agencies
Raw and IB believed and passed on to CBI, which has been made the nodal agency
to track fake currency cases.
CBI sources said the racket used Dawood's
network across Thailand, Nepal, Bangladesh, Dubai and India to finance terror
activities and destabilise the Indian economy in the long run.
The magnitude of the problem can be understood
from the disclosure that 61,000 million pieces of fake currency in different
denominations worth Rs 169,000 crore were circulating in India till 2000.
A senior CBI official said the disclosure was an eye-opener if one looked
at the huge gap between the actual circulation and seizures of FICNs. As against
an estimated circulation of FICNs worth Rs 169,000 crore till 2000, the actual
seizures were worth Rs 5.57 crore in 2002, Rs 5.29 crore in 2003, Rs 6.81
crore in 2004 and Rs 1.12 crore in 2005 (till March).
vishwa.mohan@timesgroup.com
