Believe it or not, all members of a family in East Champaran district have been thriving on the illegal trade of fake Indian currency notes.

The personnel of the 13th battalion of the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) on Thursday arrested Mohammad Reyaz alias Munna from Laxmipur area, close to the India-Nepal border near Raxaul in East Champaran district, around 200 km north of Patna.

Sources said Reyaz (45), who runs a betel shop beside NH-77 at Raxaul, was arrested with fake counterfeit notes having a face value of Rs 1 lakh. They were in the denomination of Rs 1,000. He was nabbed before he could deliver the consignment.

R.K. Singh, in-charge of Pantokka border outpost near Raxaul, said Reyaz was the last member in his family to be arrested on the charge of supplying fake notes. Earlier, his wife Juveda Khatoon was arrested in Delhi and subsequently lodged in Tihar jail.

Reyaz’s two sisters — Munni Khatoon and Noor Nesa — are also lodged in Meerut and Tihar jails respectively. “A Meerut police team recently conducted a raid at his Laxmipur house but he managed to give them the slip,” Jitendra Singh, an inspector with the SSB, said.

He said he had not come across such a family, engaged in fake currency deals on the porous border. “A team had earlier raided their place and seized counterfeit notes with face value of Rs 45,000,” he said.

Reyaz told interrogators he used to receive consignments of fake notes from one Aas Mohammed, a resident of Adapur in East Champaran district. The consignment reached the district from Nepal and Bangladesh. Murgia Tola, close to the India-Nepal border, is the nerve centre of unlawful trade.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) had last week arrested Sharda Shanker Kushwaha, one of the main dealers in fake currency and Pakistan’s ISI operative, from the border at Raxaul. Earlier this year, the police had recovered fake notes with a face value of Rs 50 lakh from Kushwaha in Delhi but the Nepal native had escaped.

Gang busted

Four members of an inter-state gang of vehicle lifters were arrested on Thursday in Gopalganj.

Kuchaikot police station in charge Braj Bhushan Singh said that the same gang had kidnapped the truck loaded with health drinks two days ago and on Wednesday night and they were trying to loot another truck.