Rs 6cr fake Indian notes recovered

An official notes down the serial numbers of fake Indian rupees worth 6.40 crore at Shahjalal International Airport yesterday after the notes were discovered at the airport's cargo handling section. Photo: Sk Enamul Haq

A consignment of forged Indian currency notes of Rs 6.40 crore was recovered at Dhaka Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport yesterday less than two months after the arrest of a smuggler of such fake currencies in the capital.
Tipped-off, a team of customs intelligence searched the airport's cargo section around noon and recovered the Indian currencies.
Those have been brought here from Pakistan in a Qatar Airways cargo flight, said Nur-e-Alam Siddiqui, assistant superintendent of police in the Armed Police Battalion.
“We found six bundles of Indian currencies with the same serial number. This made us suspect that these are fake,” said Moinul Khan, director general of customs intelligence.
On March 3, Detective Branch of police arrested a smuggler identified as Mokhlesur Rahman with fake notes of Rs 1.5 lakh, which exposed a smuggling network operating from Pakistan to India, using Bangladesh as a transit point.
He was about to transport them to Sylhet, where they are in huge demand among illegal cow traders and narcotics dealers, Jahangir Alam, assistant commissioner of DB police had told The Daily Star.
Mokhlesur was taken on a two-day remand but the investigation did not progress much, he said yesterday. “Mokhlesur used to get assignments over the phone. We collected a couple of numbers but they were all unregistered so we could not make any headway.”
Bangladesh is used as a transit route because of a circle of unscrupulous staff at the airport, who make it a lucrative passage for smugglers, despite the stringent security measures, Moinul said.  
The customs got their first heads-up on the syndicate on Saturday when they arrested a Biman aircraft assistant technician for links with smuggling of 106 kilograms of gold bars.
“The arrestee, Mohammad Anisuddin, told us that a technician named Masud had deployed him. Furthermore we got related messages on his mobile phone from many staff inside the airport,” Moinul said.