Click to play videonew Delhi: Counterfeit currency notes are being surreptitiously smuggled into India and are wrecking havoc with the country's financial system.
With more fake notes being found everyday, the chances are growing that the money in our banks or the notes that we exchange in every day transactions could be counterfeit.
Security agencies and even the Reserve Bank of India is grappling with the issue of fake currency notes which is smuggled into the country through the porous Indo-Nepal border with the help of Pakistan's ISI.
CNN-IBN tracked down an ISI agent in Nepal and sources in Nepal's law enforcement agencies arranged for a meeting with him.
The man showed the CNN-IBN team fake Indian currency which he said was from a fresh consignment. The notes look real, feel real and even had a water-mark.
The Pakistan Embassy in Kathmandu is the nerve centre. The ISI agent said that Khalid Mehmood, a senior ISI officer working in the Embassy's Education Department, runs the network, with another ISI officer, Jamil Alam.
"Certainly there are some nations and agencies behind this operation. A common person can't identify what is fake and what is real. I can't say anything sitting on this chair," Yogeshwar Rom Khami, SP, Birganj, says.
The fake notes enter Nepal through the Kathmandu Airport. The notes are printed at ISI printing facilities in Multan and Quetta, on currency paper imported from London. The ISI also uses printing facilities in Bangladesh and Thailand..
The ISI transports the fake notes through the state-owned Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), or through the diplomatic route to Dubai, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Colombo and Dhaka.
From there ISI-backed couriers like, Azhar, bring consignments of fake currency on PIA flights to Kathmandu.
From Kathmandu the notes are taken to Birganj on the Indo-Nepal border from where they are pushed into India across the porous border through a vast network of couriers.
The crackdown on fake currency racketeers led by SP Yogeshwar Rom Khami is paying rich dividends. But the scale of the problem is so high that the Indian government will have to put in place a systematic plan to tackle the problem.
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