Fake currency with a face value of Rs 36 lakh seized on Friday by the Hyderabad city police from two persons - Mohammed Shoukat Ali of Malda district in West Bengal and K Venkata Satyanarayana Reddy of East Godavari district in Andhra Pradesh - was printed in the Government Printing Press in Karachi.It was this very press that had also printed Rs 2.36 crore worth bogus currency which was seized on August 25 last year, the day the twin bomb blasts shook the city. This was the conclusion of the police from AP and West Bengal who conducted the joint operation which led to the seizure, the first of its kind this year.
The main accused in the case - Nutfal Shaik, a resident of Baikul village in Shibgunj police limits in Bangladesh - was the key man who was in touch with terror groups and some ISI agents. “In Bangladesh, he is known to be a businessman. But his main trade is pumping fake currency into India. Available inputs suggest that he has a well-knit network and several youths from various parts of West Bengal, including Malda and Murshidabad, are working for him in India,” sources said.
Comparison of the fake currency notes seized by various agencies earlier in different places and the duplicate notes that were seized on Friday only confirmed that the printing press in Karachi was printing bogus currency worth several crores of rupees. “Highly sophisticated machinery is being used for printing the notes. Printing such notes in India is impossible,” remarked a senior police official.
In fact, the intelligence sleuths in West Bengal reportedly have information that fake currency worth several crores of rupees is lying at different places in Kolkata, waiting to be delivered by agents to different cities. “This came up during the confession of Arun Kumar Saha and his brother Naba Kumar Saha of Malda district in West Bengal,” sources said.
But what led the police to seize Rs 36 lakh worth fake currency on Friday? “It was the arrest of Kameshwar Rao on June 16 from whom bogus currency worth Rs 10,000 was seized. Initially, we did not know the Bangladesh and Pakistan link. But when we examined the seized notes closely, we discovered that such notes could not be printed in India. We pursued the lead, interrogated the accused further and he spilled the beans,” a police official associated with the investigation said.