New Delhi: The role of a key Pakistan official has surfaced in the smuggling of fake Indian currency notes (FICN). Highly placed sources revealed to IANS that Indias most wanted fugitive Dawood Ibrahims aides were in contact with a senior official of Pak embassy in Kathmandu. One of the aides, Yunus Ansari, recently arrested by Nepal police in a FICN case was operating from a small hotel located in Chakrapath area, Kathmandu, close to the Pakistan Embassy.
Sources said Ansari brothers, Yunus and Naseem, were frequent visitors to the Pakistan Embassy in Kathmandu and had been reportedly in touch with the defence attache.
Acting on a tip-off from Indian intelligence agencies, a special squad of Kathmandu police arrested Yunus Ansari and three Pakistani nationals from Tribhuvan International Airport on May 24.
Ansari who flew in from Karachi had Qatar stamps on his passport to conceal the original destination from where four suitcases were loaded with fake indian currency notes amounting to Rs 7.67 crore. The D-Company carriers had taken the Qatar Airways flight from Doha to Kathmandu to camouflage the original route of Karachi.
Sources said that Rs 2,000 Indian currency notes are being printed by Inter Services intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan at a high security printing press in Karachi. While D-Company is one of the distributors for FICN, a major bulk of fake notes are being smuggled into Bangladesh through the sea route.
In the past few months a series of seizures have been made by National Investigation Agency (NIA) ranging from West Bengal border to Gurugram in Haryana. Sources in the Intelligence Bureau said that though the quality of FICN, recovered in recent seizures, is not good, they can find a place in the market if not detected by UV counterfeit detection devices.
Besides, Yunus Ansari, who has now been put behind bars by police, Basaruddin Ansari, a local politician from Birganj, Nepal's terai region bordering Bihar, is also said to be in touch with the D Company. Basaruddin runs a private institute, National Medical College which has been allegedly funded by Dawood.
In return, a few safe premises of Basaruddin are used by D-Company as a transit point for smuggling fake currency notes into India through the porous Nepal border. After the recent seizures, SSB, the Indian paramilitary force deployed on the Nepal border has been alerted.
The Customs (preventive) Wing in UP-Bihar have also been instructed to step up vigil along the border, particularly the commercial vehicles entering India.