New Delhi: Instances of fake Indian currency notes printed in Pakistan and routed via China and Nepal have come to the notice of the government.
"The Ministry of Home Affairs has informed that instances have come to notice where Fake Indian Currency Notes (FICN)/counterfeit currency printed in Pakistan has been routed to India via China and Nepal route," the Minister of State for Finance Namo Narain Meena said in a written reply in Parliament today.
Meena said that this is an attempt by Pakistan based FICN suppliers to devise an alternative route for injecting counterfeit notes into India.
"The intelligence and investigating agencies are making efforts to detect and neutralise all such networks," he said in Rajya Sabha.
The Minister said FICN is injected into India through land, air and sea routes which include Indo-Pak border, neighbouring countries such as Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka as well as West Asia (UAE) and South East Asia (Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam.
Meena said there is a moderate rise in the quantum of fake currency notes in the last three years to destabilise the Indian economy and financing of terrorist activities.
"To address the multi-dimensional aspects of the FICN menace, several agencies such as Ministry of Home Affairs, Security and Intelligence agencies of the centre and states, CBI, RBI and Ministry of Finance are working in tandem to thwart the illegal activities," he said.
He said the government recovered 1.99 lakh fake currency notes of value worth Rs 10.14 crore as on June 30, 2013.
In reply to a separate question, Finance Minister P Chidambaram said that there were inputs indicating that several places located in international border in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal have emerged as major routes for counterfeit notes smuggling into India.
Chidambaram said CBI and National Investigation Agency (NIA) are the lead agencies for investigation of FICN cases. Besides, government has constituted Terror Funding and Fake Currency Cell (TFFC) in NIA to focus on investigation of TFFC cases.
PTI
