Burrabazar: The special task force of Calcutta police arrested two men late on Monday with fake 2,000 rupee notes with a face value of Rs 10 lakh.
Cops picked up Md Abdus Sattar, 42, of Kaliachak in Malda and Seikh Azad, 52, of Bharatpur in Rajasthan in the Canning Street area in Burrabazar when they tried to buy electrical items from a shop using the fake notes, the police said.
A city court sent the two to police custody till May 28.
"The notes are of high quality... it is difficult to understand they are fake from the feel or look," a special task force officer said.
The backgrounds of Sattar and Azad have left investigators worried.
Malda has been a hotbed for fake notes and Kaliachak, where Sattar is from, remains a vital point for circulation of such notes across north Bengal.
Rajasthan is one of the 10 states, which had witnessed maximum circulation of fake 2,000 rupee notes in December 2017, an investigating officer said.
"We are still to know how the two met and were in the city with such a huge cache of fake notes," the officer said.
The high circulation of fake 2,000 rupee notes has remained a cause of concern for central intelligence agencies.
Figures by the National Crime Records Bureau revealed that between November 8 and December 31 last year, cops and other government agencies had seized 2,272 fake 2,000 rupee notes.
"While the quality of earlier fake 2,000 rupee notes was poor, the ones we found with Sattar and Azad are of high quality," the officer said.
"So, it means the notes have been printed using top-quality paper."
Last August, the BSF had seized fake 2,000 rupee notes at the Churiantpur border outpost of face value Rs 5,20,000. The seized notes had been handed over to cops at Kaliachak.
Special task force officers believe Sattar and Azad are the face of a gang engaged in spreading fake notes across the country.
The brain behind the gang is operating from beyond Bengal and had possibly tried testing waters in Calcutta with this consignment of fake notes, an officer said.