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Crucial evidence on Pakistan’s involvement in racket: NIA

Baffled by the menace of fake currency notes, the UPA government has now pinned hopes on the US to learn from them the ways to tackle the conundrum allegedly created by Pakistan to destabilise Indian economy.

It is learnt that the during the “Indo-US strategic dialogue” expected to be held later this month, New Delhi would make a formal request to the Obama administration to learn how they have been successful in checking counterfeit dollars.

Home Secretary R K Singh will be part of the delegation from India that will interact with its American counterparts. Union Home Ministry officials would like to know what part of their strategy and technology can be imbibed to check the circulation of the same since, they believe printing cannot be stopped till Pakistan decides to curb it, which it is allegedly using as a tool to unleash proxy war across the border. 

In their bid to foil such attempts, the government has adopted a multi-dimensional strategy which incorporates regularly updating security features of currency notes, setting up a Fake Indian Currency Notes Co-ordination Cell (FCORD) and ensuring a better interaction between the ministries concerned and investigation and other agencies. Nevertheless, the smuggling of Fake Indian Currency Notes (FICN) continues unabated under the nose of authorities.

The government has also empowered the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to prosecute pushers of fake currency.  The Centre is attempting to narrow down its dependence on imports to meet its demand of currency papers. A state of the art paper mill for manufacturing bank note at Mysore in a joint venture partnership is also planned to be set up by the government.

The NIA, after arresting in March two key players involved in this illegal business, had officially said that they had gathered crucial evidence in this operation about the involvement of Pakistan in the production and circulation of FICN into India.

Moreover, during the just concluded Indo-Pak home secretary level talks, New Delhi had raised this issue with Islamabad.

“The FICN were being smuggled into India by Pakistan based FICN dealer Iqbal Kana. He belongs to Kairana Tehsil of Muzaffarnagar and has been operating from Pakistan since many years,” the NIA had charged.

Pakistan is using Dubai, Bangladesh and Nepal as the transit route to smuggle the FICN into this side of the border.