Pakistan's ISI using S Asian countries to send fake currency to India: report

Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is reported to have set up a factory in Dubai for printing Indian currency to pump into India to finance its activities and undermine the national economy,  Zee News reported.

ISI sees Dubai as a better option because of the possibility of getting to use low-paid foreign workers as conduits for sending out money to a number of countries from where it can be channeled back to India, says the report.

According to theZee Media report, ISI pumps the fake currencies to India mainly via Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

''Last month two big consignments of fake Indian notes were seized in Bangladesh. The first consignment was carrying an amount of around Rs2 crore while the second one was of Rs1 crore,'' Zee Media reporter Manish Shukla said.

''Both the consignments had come from Dubai,'' he said, adding that a team of National Investigation Agency (NIA) is probing this case.

While quoting NIA, Shukla also revealed that the printing of these fake currency notes was being done in Dubai and various other parts of the Middle East.

''Earlier, this fake printing machine was being set up in Karachi, which was later shifted to Dubai due to international pressure,'' he added.

It may be noted that port officials in Chittagong, Bangladesh, had found boxes filled with Indian currency notes in a consignment marked as 'home appliances'. The container arrived in a ship from the Fujairah port in the United Arab Emirates.

Although it has been known for long that Pakistani agencies were involved in huge production of fake Indian currency notes in the Middle East, which were then shipped back to South Asia for entry into India, the modus operandi and the base of operation are yet to be fully established.

In recent years, India has been able to trace much of these Pakistan-sponsored fake currencies with the cooperation of Bangladesh and Nepal.