Muzaffarpur senior superintendent of police Rajesh Kumar with the arrested persons and the fake notes at a news conference in Muzaffarpur on Wednesday. Picture by Prakash Kumar

Muzaffarpur/Patna, June 15: A consignment of counterfeit currency notes with a face value of Rs 1 lakh was seized from Muzaffarpur in north Bihar today.

The seizure of the fake currency notes from Bibiganj locality in the heart of Muzaffarpur town points to the magnitude of the racket thriving in the districts situated on the India-Nepal border.

Intelligence sources said Bihar-UP borders with Nepal has of late become the most prominent route for inflow of counterfeit currency notes into Indian territory from Nepal. The racketeers have spread their network in different parts of the country and engaged unemployed youths in the lucrative business. Even women have been recruited as carriers to dodge the district police and the personnel of the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB), which has been deployed to guard the porous international border.

Acting on a tip off, a police team carried out a raid at Aman Computer Centre on Brij Bihari Lane under Brahmapura police station in the wee hours of Wednesday and arrested four persons. The police seized electronic gadgets, including computers, printing machines, mobile phones and fake currency notes during the operation.

Sharing details of the police operation, Muzaffarpur senior superintendent of police (SSP) Rajesh Kumar said fake notes valued at Rs 1.2 lakh in denomination of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 and Rs 32,000 original currency were also recovered during the search of the double-storeyed building used as printing press.

The police also found Nepalese currency worth Rs 5,000 in different denominations. One monitor, two printers and a high-resolution scanner were used in printing the counterfeit notes. The clandestine business was going on at the computer centre for the past several months, police said.

A high-level team comprising officials of the central and the state intelligence agencies rushed to Muzaffarpur from Patna to interrogate the arrested persons identified as Pramod Kumar, Rampreet Mahto, Naresh Choudhary and Virendra Choudhary.

The SSP said Pramod, a computer professional, was the mastermind of the racket. Pramod is a resident of Laxmi Chowk locality of Muzaffapur while Birendra Choudhary is a native of Malinga in Nepal. Two others — Naresh Choudhary and Ram Prit Mahto — hail from Sitamarhi district.

The modus operandi of the gang was simple. They used to print the fake currencies under the cover of printing press. Pramod had formed a group of carrier agents, who were assigned to deliver the consignments in different districts, including those situated on the international border. Parmod Kumar, however, told the interrogators that he has been pumping in counterfeit currency notes in the market for three months. “I was paid Rs 20 for printing a fake currency note of Rs 500 denonimation,” a police officer quoted Pramod as saying.

During interrogation, the arrested persons said the gang used private vehicles to deliver the consignment of counterfeit notes. To minimise suspicion, women couriers, particularly those with young children, were preferred within India and were paid two per cent of the total face value of the fake currency notes.

A male shadow was used to trail the couriers to ensure that the police did not trap them. “We have got the names of the persons working as carrier agents as well as those patronising the racket,” the SSP said, adding that the printouts of the five mobile phones that were seized during the search operation were being procured to catch the other members of the gang.

The Barhampura police have lodged an FIR in this connection. Sources in the state police headquarters said that till April 2011, counterfeit notes with face value of Rs 1.40 lakh were seized from different parts of the state. In 2010, fake currency with face value of Rs 8.78 lakh were seized while counterfeit notes worth Rs 7.93 lakh were recovered in 2009.

Director-general of police Neel Mani said that all the superintendents of police of the districts bordering Nepal have been alerted and asked to keep a vigil on the activities of the drug peddlers and those involved in circulation of counterfeit notes.