MUMBAI: A man who arrived on a flight from Dubai on Sunday morning was arrested for carrying fake Rs 2 ,000 notes with a face value of almost Rs 24 lakh. The notes were of high quality, incorporating seven of nine security features .The accused told police they were printed in Pakistan and sent to Dubai, with India intended as the final destination. The denomination, when issued in 2016, was touted as highly secure, but RBI said in October that no Rs 2,000 note was printed in 2019 as NIA had found high-quality fakes .The passenger, Javed Shaikh (36), a Kalwa resident, had been to Dubai and Bangkok in the past and may have brought in many such consignments. Police are questioning him about who the present consignment was meant for. “An average person will not be able to identify the fake notes. They look genuine. Shaikh walked away at the airport’s security check. He was caught at the bus stop outside the international terminal,” said joint commissioner of police (crime) Santosh Rastogi, who did not rule out a terror link.He said Shaikh could be caught because of a CIA tip-off . “The counterfeit currency was stuffed in one of his bags. It took us over an hour to locate it,” Rastogi said.“We identified him because of his white jeans. It was around 9.30am. He was waiting for a BEST bus... The notes were scattered inside a cushion, which was stuffed into a gap between the bag’s wall and a cloth liner,” he said.The format of the notes’ arrangement was the reason why they couldn’t be detected by baggage scanners. “A scanner identifies notes if they are kept in bundles. It’s the edges of the bundles that get detected. As opposed to this, Shaikh was carrying the notes in a scattered format, making machine detection difficult,” Rastogi said.On the quality of the notes, a crime branch officer said that the two security features that weren’t copied properly were ‘optically variable ink’ (ink that changes colour with changing angles) and ‘see-through register’ (hidden features that are seen only if a note is held against light).The team that busted Shaikh was the crime branch’s unit 8. Led by DCP Akbar Pathan, it included ACP Sangeeta Patil, and senior inspector Ajay Joshi.Shaikh has been booked under IPC sections for common intention, criminal conspiracy, and counterfeiting. During interrogation, he said he went to Dubai just five days ago, and for the first time. “But we don’t believe this,” said Rastogi.