Hyderabad, January 08: In a major breakthrough, the city-based National Investigation Agency (NIA) has busted a Pakistan-based Fake Indian Currency Note (FICN) racket and arrested a gang of 11 persons, including the kingpin, involved in smuggling of fake Indian currency from Pakistan, here last evening.
As many as Rs 27,000 fake currency notes were seized from the gang, who had already managed to circulate fake notes worth a crore of rupees, according to NIA sources here.
Sleuths of Hyderabad-based NIA branch arrested a 23-year-old Morgen Hossain, the alleged kingpin in the racket, from Malda district of West Bengal yesterday and seized fake currency notes amounting to Rs 27,000 from him.
Based on the Hossain’s statement provided during the interrogation, the agency had further conducted raids all over the country and ten more persons were arrested, the agency said.
The gang acted at the behest of terrorist organisations who wanted to destabilise the country through the ciruclation of fake currency notes, and the gang had a national-wide network, the agency sources said.
The accused — H Rahaman (26), Abdul Mutalik (25), Prashant Mondal (23), Morjen (23), Manik Sheik, Bahdur Yadav, Sajib-Ul-Haq, Anwar, Jamal Sheik and Akram –, all natives of West Bengal, were arrested in different cities including, Chennai, Hyderabad and West Bangal.
The fake currency notes printed in denominations of Rs 1,000, Rs 500 and Rs 100 in Pakistan, were smuggled to Bangladesh by air and from Bangladesh they were sent to Indian cities along the border, the agency sources added.
–UNI