Guwahati, April 1: The CID Assam will seek the National Investigation Agency (NIA)’s help to bust an “international racket” which is pumping fake currency into the country in a bid to destabilise the nation’s economy.
The CID got a whiff of the racket following the arrest of two persons with counterfeit currency totalling Rs 1.65 lakh, in denominations of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000, from room number 11 of Hotel Alka at Fancy Bazar here on March 25.
A CID official said the arrest of Paban Sharma, 49, of Kokrajhar and Asha Ao, 37, of Nagaland had blown the lid off the racket which had inter-state and international links.
Ao was living in a rented house in the Panjabari locality here. Her job was to circulate the fake currency for a commission. Sharma, a member of the racket, has been distributing fake currency in the North east through agents like Ao for the past few years. The duo have circulated several lakhs of fake notes in the Northeast in the past couple of years.
The CID has registered a case (number 15/2010) under Section 489B/489C IPC.
Interrogation of the two accused and initial investigations by the CID has revealed that the racketeers smuggled a huge sum of fake notes into India via Bangladesh and Nepal through cross-border agents and distributed it across the country through a strong network of agents.
“Since the kingpins and members of this racket are based outside the state and do not fall under our jurisdiction, we are going to approach the NIA to co-ordinate further investigation of the case,” the official said. “Some of the members of the racket are also based abroad,” he added.
He said the CID had decided to approach the NIA because the case had national ramifications and the agency was mandated to probe the pushing in and circulation of fake Indian currency.
“The fake notes seized by us are of superior quality and the common man will find it difficult to distinguish them from genuine ones. It was difficult even for us to differentiate between a genuine note and a fake one,” he said.
“The texture and quality of paper of the fake notes is almost similar to real ones. We suspect that a foreign government must be involved and the notes were printed at a high security printing press abroad, probably in Pakistan under the aegis of ISI,” he said.
The two accused told interrogators that they used to exchange fake currency for original notes at a ratio of 50:50, which means that one can procure fake notes totalling Rs 1 lakh from them against genuine notes worth Rs 50,000.
The CID is also examining the call details on the mobile phones of the two accused for clues. “Sharma has given us the names of his accomplices and we have also got some phone numbers from his mobile phones. Efforts are on to track down these persons and the phone numbers are being verified,” the source said.
