This bank link reportedly emerged after a senior bank official in the Ganderbal area of J&K was found in possession of a large quantity of FICN.
Agencies investigating the smuggling of fake Indian currency notes (FICN) fear that some top public sector banks’ officials have been compromised.
The intelligence agencies have discovered that public sector bank officials based in borders states such as Jammu & Kashmir and Rajasthan have connived with militants and Pakistani agents in pumping FICN into the banking channel.
This bank link reportedly emerged after a senior bank official in the Ganderbal area of J&K was found in possession of a large quantity of FICN.
Shocked investigating agencies believe that some senior bank officials are in close touch with militants and have put them under surveillance.
The suspicion is that these bank officials leak out the serial numbers of the bank notes to the militants who, in turn, pass on the information to their Pakistani handlers. These original serial numbers are then duplicated in the fake notes.
Fake currency notes have become a major concern in India over the last few years. Seizures of FICN in the past have shocked the Reserve Bank of India, which found that the security features on Indian notes had been copied with over 95% accuracy.
Central Bureau of Investigation director Ashwini Kumar had once even said that a secret currency template may have been stolen but corrected himself later to merely say that the security features had been compromised.
The CBI is the nodal agency probing FICN cases, assisted by the National Investigation Agency, Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, Multi-Agency Centre (under the Intelligence Bureau), and the Enforcement Directorate.
Seizures in the banking channel have grown over the past few years. In August 2008, the Uttar Pradesh seized a chest of a State Bank of India branch containing Rs4 crore in counterfeit notes in Dumariaganj, a town close to the Nepal border in eastern Uttar Pradesh.
The RBI has said that Rs 2.44 crore of fake notes were seized from banking channels in 2004-05, which has gone up to over Rs 15 crore now.
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