Have counterfeiters cracked ₹2,000 note?

NEWDELHI: Delhi Police on Thursday seized ~6.6 lakh in counterfeit currency notes , largest seizure since demonetisation in November last year, and claimed that the inflow of “high quality” fake ~2,000 notes has picked up.

Last month, police arrested two men with counterfeit currency worth ~5.98 lakh. Last Tuesday, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) had arrested four persons from Howrah railway station and recovered ~9.1 lakh fake currency from them.

Kashid, a 54-year-old man arrested with the counterfeit currency on Thursday, claims to have already supplied fake notes

worth ~2 cr ore in the last four-five months since he resumed business after demonetisation, PK Kushwah, DCP (special cell), said on Friday. The two men arrested last month in Delhi are his associates.

All the counterfeit notes seized were of ~2,000 de nomination and had most of the security features of the new currency notes, including the water mark and the security thread.

When PM Narendra Modi announced demonetisation last November, he listed eliminating counterfeit currency as one of the objectives of the exercise. The ~2,000 note pushed into the market after demonetisation was believed to be difficult to replicate. In April, the government informed Parliament in April that a total of ~5.6 crore, all in fake ~2,000 notes, had been seized by different law-enforcement agencies across India after demonetisation.

Police said the notes seized near Anand Vihar bus terminal on Thursday were “very similar in appearance and texture” to genuine Indian currency. “The manufacturers used paper of fine quality and texture and security features were inserted. The fake currencies were not easily detectable ,” Kushwahs aid.

The obvious giveaway was that most of the counterfeit notes had the same serial numbers printed on them .“Of the 330 notes seized from us, 250 had the same serial numbers. The remaining 80 had four different serial numbers distributed among them,” said Kushwah.