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| Bundles of seized counterfeit notes |
July 27: The proliferation of counterfeit currency in this Lower Assam district has made banks doubly alert and traders wary of making quick financial transactions.
It is understood that of the 41 branches of nationalised banks in Dhubri district, each bank, on an average, receives at least two fake notes of Rs 500 or Rs 100 denomination everyday. Traders who make huge transactions are having difficulty, too, in checking currency during peak-hour trading. ?We get the time to sift through bundles of currency for fake notes only after trading hours. On most days, it is impossible for us to find out the origin of the notes,? a businessman from Dhubri town said.
Banks are equipped with UV (ultra-violet) fake currency-detection machines and light meters, but traders do not have that advantage. When banks do find out that some notes are fake, the traders are left high and dry. A bank, according to the law, is required to register a case against any person who presents fake currency, but this is not done always keeping in mind the credentials of a customer and the volume of transactions done by him. However, banks do destroy the notes straightaway.
Sources informed that in 2000, fake currency totalling Rs 6,000, all of them in Rs 100 denomination, was detected at a branch of UCO Bank. A case was registered at Dhubri police station and is still pending in court. While fake currency has remained one of the major concerns for all banks in Dhubri district, busting the network has been a big challenge for the state and central intelligence.
Fake currency is pumped into the Northeast from Bangladesh and Nepal, via Cooch Behar in West Bengal and Dhubri district. Fake currency usually travels through the hands of money-laundering agents operating in the villages along the Indo-Bangladesh border in Assam and West Bengal.
A huge amount of fake currency enters Assam from Nepal, intelligence sources said. Last week, troops of the Red Horns Division of the army, stationed in Dhubri, busted a gang involved in printing fake currency. A cache of arms and ammunition was seized from them at Dingdinga village, under Tamarhat police station in Kokrajhar district.
Army sources said a team went to Tamarhat on the basis of specific information and arrested two suspected Ulfa conduits ? Samsul Alom Mandal and Hazarat Ali ? on the night of July 18. The duo told interrogators that a gang of counterfeiters had made Dingdinga their base and started printing fake currency of Rs 100 denomination.
On the basis of the statements made by the suspected Ulfa conduits, the army team rushed to Dingdinga and raided the house of a man identified as Lambu Marandi. Fake currency-making equipment, counterfeit notes totalling Rs 10,000, Rs 40,000 in genuine cash, a grenade, an SLR, a pistol and a huge amount of ammunition were found in the house.