How Fake 2,000 Notes Are Smuggled Into India From Bangladesh Border

Churiyantpur Village, India-Bangladesh border: Malda in West Bengal was always the capital for counterfeit notes smuggled in from bordering Bangladesh. Demonetisation had brought the business to a standstill. But in a worrying development, the fake notes are back. In the last three weeks, around Rs 4 lakh worth of fake 2,000 rupee notes were seized by the Border Security Force or BSF. What is worrying is the quality of the fakes as they seem to look very close to the new notes introduced just three months ago. NDTV travelled to Malda and found that the BSF has stepped up vigil to stop the smugglers.

On February 15, 100 notes were seized from the border at Churiyantpur. On 19th, 96 notes were seized again from a courier on the National Highway. In one case the courier was caught and handed over to the police. In the other, the courier escaped leaving the packet along the fence separating India and Bangladesh.

As NDTV visited the porous border near Kaliachak in Malda and districts like Murshidabad, we learnt that the barbed wire between Sushani village in Malda and Nawabganj district in Bangladesh is no hindrance for the smugglers. For them it's an easy job as it just entails throwing a packet of fake currency notes across the fence into India which is then picked up by a courier and taken to the highway around 13 kilometres from the National Highway and around 40 km from Farrakka station.

With villages in close proximity on the international border, the smugglers use places like Sushani and Churiyantpur to smuggle in fake notes. The BSF says most couriers used on the Indian side reside on the border and sometimes the villagers do it themselves. Even if the courier comes from another place they are in touch with the villagers for cover and coordinating their escape once the consignment is picked up. The courier usually pretends to be working in the fields if it is day time. If it is night time, they simply hide in the bushes or mango orchards. The smugglers from Bangladesh do the same and the moment they see an opportunity they throw packets across the border which the courier picks up and makes a quick escape.

Villagers at Sushani admit openly that the smugglers use these routes and they are often forced to help the couriers escape. They say they are caught between the criminals and security forces. "They keep threatening us. They tell us if you don't help, we will tell the BSF that you do this and you will be trapped. If we tell anyone they will drop the notes into our house to trouble us," says Laljan Miyan, a resident of Sushani.

"If we stop them they throw the notes at our home and run away. The BSF will catch the person who has the notes. That's how they are running the business nowadays," added Firoz Miyan, another resident.

The BSF is worried they have only been able to catch a few couriers so far and not the kingpins in Kaliachak who collaborate with the ISI, which, intelligence agencies claim, supplies the fake notes. With the fakes improving in quality, tracking them down will be that much harder as the smugglers are looking at making up for the lost time. The BSF also suspects that the notes coming in now are samples and once the smugglers are confident that the copies are perfect the attempts to send in fake currency will go up significantly.

"They have compromised some security features but not all the features. They have definitely not been able to get to the paper right. The texture of the paper is of poorer quality but for a lay person it can sometimes be passed off as a genuine note and unless you're very careful it is difficult to identify these fake notes," Inspector General, BSF (South Bengal), PSR Anjaneyulu told NDTV.