Arup Chanda By

KOLKATA: India’s most wanted, Dawood Kaskar Ibrahim, is the brain behind smuggling Fake Indian Currency Notes (FICN) from Bangladesh to West Bengal with the support of his mentors in Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The arrest of Bangladeshi national Mazrul Rahman on November 29 from Shobhapur in Malda district on the India-Bangladesh border with `18 lakh of FICN by the Border Security Force led to a National Investigation Agency (NIA) probe. It learnt about his Bangladeshi bosses and informed Dhaka.

Bangladeshi sleuths arrested six men from near Dhaka airport and seized several crores of FICN. Among the arrested was Pakistani national Abdullah alias Salim. Interrogation revealed that their boss was Dawood Ibrahim, and that D-Company (as his gang is called) has a network in Malda and in some border districts of West Bengal.

Investigation revealed that Abdullah migrated to Karachi with his family in 1979 from Tarpurchandi in Chandpur in Bangladesh. He joined D-Company through Aslam Chaudhury alias Taimur, and kept in touch with the “manager of FICN smuggling” Subabhai alias Ershad.Abdullah revealed that during the last six years, the smuggling of thousands of crores of FICN to Malda from Chapai Nawabgunje in Bangladesh was controlled by Iqbal Kana alias Adis Iqbal alias Malikbhai of D-Company, a resident of Shalimar Gate in Lahore. Malikbhai vetted each recruit before engaging them in smuggling FICN from printing presses in Nepal to Bangladesh and then into West Bengal. There were several printing presses in Lahore and Karachi too, he said.

Five others who were nabbed said that Bengalis in Pakistan who did not have passports and wanted to return to Bangladesh were being recruited. D-Company arranged “out passes” for them through the Bangladesh High Commission in Pakistan. They carried trunk loads of FICN, which was allowed to pass through the green channel at Dhaka airport by D-Company and ISI officials.

The NIA was informed that a FICN “stock yard” existed in Shibgunje and Daulatpur in Malda, which is managed by Saddam Sheikh.

The modus operandi was to sell a lakh of FICN for Rs 40,000 to businessmen. Some Muslim journalists with links to Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen of Bangladesh—including a British national woman who worked for a paper owned by Sudipto Sen, chairman of Saradha Group tainted by the multi-crore chit fund scam and now in jail—is also being investigated by the NIA. So is her boyfriend, who was behind bars for 69 days for raping a woman; he frequently visited Bangladesh, Malaysia, Dubai and several Western countries. Both are considered to be Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen agents and are getting protection from some politicians in West Bengal. A a large number of foreign currency was recovered from the man, who managed to bribe the local police station and send it to Jamaat cadres in the city.

The profit from smuggling FICN is sent through Karmakar, a hawala operator in Malda, to D-Company’s agents in Kajipara, Mirpur, Gabtuli and Gulshan in Dhaka. The thousands of crores of rupees are then routed to Dawood in Karachi and Lahore.

The arrest of a Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen leader revealed that Farina Arshad, second secretary (political) of the Pakistan high commission in Dhaka, was also involved in smuggling FICN to India. A Pakistan High Commission staffer was caught meeting militants and was sent back to Pakistan.