DRI raids Chennai port for fake notes from Pakistan

The officials have asked the container terminal management to suspend both inbound and outbound cargo movement to facilitate inspection. 

Highly placed DRI sources said that the raids have been carried out across the country following information regarding large scale smuggling of FICNs of Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 denominations have been despatched by the Pakistani operatives and are likely to land at any of the ports in India.

“It’s a highly secretive operation and officials had been working on this for quite sometime. We cannot divulge the finer details as of now as the raids are continuing,” a DRI official told DTNext. 

Instructions have been given to the officials to keep the details of the raid as a secret and senior officials of DRI have been flown down from other states to carry out the raids, sources said. The sea customs officials are also helping DRI in the raids. The container movement has been completely paralysed following the raids, sources said.

FICNs smuggling has been a major problem that India battled pre-demonetisation as the counterfeit currency rackets managed to source the same paper which RBI used to print Indian currency from London and also managed to replicate almost all security features on Indian currency notes. 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his announcement of demonetisation had said that the move was also to curb the growing menace of counterfeit currency distribution which has crossed double digit percentage in our currency circulation. 

Recently several cases of counterfeiting of new Rs 2,000 and Rs 500 currency notes were reported in several parts of the country and the same racket which supplied FICNs to India through Bangladeshi borders to Malta in Kolkatha is believed to behind the new cases.