’Pak High Commissions distributing fake Indian currency

Mangalore Today News Network

New Delhi, March 5: A “million intelligence inputs” reportedly point at the involvement of the Pakistan High Commissions in Dhaka and Kathmandu in distributing Fake Indian Currency Notes (FICN).

According to a secret 65-page Government report cited by an Indian daily, officials in the High Commissions are also responsible for manufacturing FICN.

The Government has for the first time revealed that FICN worth Rs 16,000 crore are in “circulation”.

The report further links the FICN distribution to at least 15 cases of terrorist funding. It reveals how David Headley confessed to having been provided with Rs 2.5 lakh in fake Indian notes in Pakistan for an Indian trip to conspire the Mumbai terror attack.

The report holds Pakistan responsible for running a “sophisticated business enterprise covering many countries”.

It lists 11 officials supposedly of the Pakistan Government either linked to the ISI or the High Commission, said the daily.

The report contains a list of 28 key “FICN network operator gangs” in Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Bangkok which are “so well established that they could also be used for arranging hide-outs, for easy and secure communication channels to subversives and safe launch-pads for espionage agents”.

More than 35 percent of FICN seizures of above Rs 10 lakh over a five-year period have been “directly” sourced from Pakistan, adds the report.

“Regular intelligence feeds are available with numerous references to the FICN trade in Bangladesh and Nepal where minion of the Pakistan High Commission and its officials (by name), facilitating the trade, are common...there are impeccable inputs to suggest that in Dhaka, FICN is supplied by the ‘Embassy’ and transported by the ‘Embassy vehicle’.”

Some of the “officials” mentioned in the report are Brigadier Shaukat Mahmood Sufi, a “senior Pak ISI officer coordinating the entire programme”, Rattan, an official at the Pak High Commission (PHC) in Dhaka, and Aftab Afzal, a visa counsellor at PHC in Dhaka.

“On account of increasing difficulties in pushing FICN through Bangladesh and Nepal into India, network operators are (now) exploring the Pakistan-Guangzhou-India route using commercial containers. They assess that increasing trade between India and China has led to a large number of containers arriving by the sea route in India,” says the report.