In the villages along the India-Bangladesh border, there’s a market for something that went out of vogue in the rest of the country decades ago — audio cassette tapes. The demand isn’t from retro music lovers but from smugglers of counterfeit currency who use tape to drag bundles of fake Indian notes across the border.

The transparent tape is laid across the porous border. A person in Bangladesh ties notes to one end and someone on the Indian side hauls it in slowly so that the movement cannot be detected. It’s used to move money over ground, and through grass, crops and unused underground irrigation pipes.

It’s simple yet ingenious methods such as these that investigation agencies have to combat while cracking down on fake currency notes in India, 45% of which comes through the international border in West Bengal, say sources in the National Investigation Agency (NIA). Sometimes, the method is as simple as putting the notes into a sack and lobbing it over the fence into Indian territory. Bags that land on the road are seized by the BSF but a majority land in people’s houses and make their way to the rest of the country.

Kaliachak in Malda district has always been a point to push fake currency into India but the volume has increased over the past few years, says NIA. In 2013, the fake currency seized had a face value of Rs 1.43 crore; this increased to Rs 1.5 crore in 2014; and in 2015, it was Rs 1.97 crore. This, according to NIA, however, is the tip of the proverbial iceberg. “The counterfeit notes seized every year constitute just 5% to 7% of the entire amount (circulated),” says an NIA officer. “Most notes are of such high quality.

It’s hard to distinguish them from the real ones. All the watermarks are replicated and the paper is similar to the original. We don’t know where they are procuring paper from,” said the officer. The hub of the fake currency racket is in the 18 villages lying within a 12sqkm “golden triangle”. So what’s this golden triangle? After the Golapgunj police outpost, 40km from Malda town, the road leading to the border bifurcates — one branch passes through Mohabbatpur and the other through Chorianantapur. The area from Golapgunj to these two villages has been dubbed the ‘golden triangle’.

The problem is that of the 172km border near Malda, only 99km is fenced, 55km is open — the open part runs through Kaliachak — and the river flows along 18km. “No barbed wire means infiltration is easy, though BSF is deployed,” explains Malda’s SP Prasun Banerjee. The locals play their part in bringing the counterfeit currency into India. In the village of Mohabbatpur, for instance, there isn’t a single family without a member who hasn’t been arrested for counterfeiting.

Poverty makes these villages fertile grounds for ‘daris’ or ‘linkmen’ who recruit villagers to move the cash. Rolling bidis or working as daily wage labourers on farms are the only jobs in these villages. “The bidi rollers don’t have work through the year, so it is easy to lure them into the fake currency racket,” says Trinamool member Hazrat Ali. Two villages TOI visited — Sashani and Misutola — have no pucca roads, running water, electricity, schools or health centres. Asha Begum, 20, has a one-yearold in her lap, and three kids around her.

Her husband Najibul Haque was arrested in 2012 in Ghaziabad. With an ageing mother-in-law and four children to care for, Begum finds it difficult to make ends meet. “I can’t make enough bidis to sustain six people and have to depend on charity,” she says, taking out a document the CBI sent her, which says fake currency with a face value of Rs 4 lakh was recovered from Haque. “I can’t even imagine what a lakh looks like,” she says. Investigation agencies, nevertheless, have traced the network over years and are convinced of a complex web of criminal activity with links to an ISI-backed network and Malda district’s impoverished villages are a part of it.

A few months ago, Kaliachak resident Shahjahan Seikh alias Tunnu, 35, was arrested by the Delhi police’s special cell. According to the police, Seikh was the kingpin of a fake currency smuggling racket. The notes were reportedly printed by the ISI and smuggled through Chapai Nababganj district of Bangladesh. After procurement, conduits took them to the intended buyers spread over across the country, says an NIA officer.

Malda police give three reasons for the district’s notoriety as a fake note hub. “First, it is close to Chapai Nababgunj in Bangladesh, which is famous for smuggling fake notes,” explains Banerjee. “Secondly, Malda provides ready access to Nepal through north Bengal. Also, locals here go to Rajasthan, Punjab, Delhi etc as labourers and carry the notes with them.”

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