Customs officials at Dhaka’s international airport arrested a Pakistani national with a huge cache of foreign currencies, worth over Tk10 crore, on Friday night.
The customs department, however, could not immediately confirm whether the seized notes were counterfeits.
The Pakistani man, identified as Asimullah Khan, 40, was detained with different currencies as he attempted to cross the “green channel” at the Shahjalal International Airport after arriving on an Emirates flight from Pakistan,customs sources said yesterday.
“By searching his body, the customs officials found currencies of different countries, worth about Tk10.8 crore. The currencies included Indian and Pakistani rupees and US dollars,” said Qamrul Hasan, assistant commissioner of the customs department.
The Indian currencies alone were estimated to be about Rs8.8 million (over Tk1.1 crore), he added.
Customs officials handed over Asimullah to the Airport police station yesterday evening and filed a smuggling case against him, Qamrul said.
The customs officer, however, declined to disclose the destination of the currencies or Asimullah’s connections in Bangladesh.
He also said until the notes were tested, it could not be verified if the currencies were fake or real.
“Indian currencies worth about Tk10crore have been seized in the past one year from about 20 Pakistanis. Almost 90 percent of the seized notes were found to be fake,” Qamrul added.
According to police and customs sources, Indian currencies are mainly forged in Pakistan and smuggled into India through Bangladesh, with the help of gangs that have members in both Pakistan and Bangladesh.
In the last few years, Bangladesh police, customs and Rab have seized fake Indian currencies worth over Tk100 crore from different parts of the country, and arrested 60 Pakistanis and over 150 Bangladeshis.
Those arrested included a large number of leaders and activists of different militant organisations, such as Jama’atul Mujahedeen Bangladesh (JMB), Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (Huji) and Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).
Based on statements given by the arrestees, law enforcement agencies believe a big portion of the profits from the fake currency trade is used to fund the banned militant outfits.
In March last year, detectives in Dhaka arrested 12 suspected militants, including four Pakistanis, with counterfeit Indian currencies worth nearly Tk1.29 crore.
In December 2009, police in Comilla arrested a Pakistani woman and two Bangladeshis, including the suspected head of the local chapter of a counterfeiting ring, along with Tk10 lakh in fake India notes. The Bangladeshi ringleader, Solaiman, allegedly had links to ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service, and LeT.
Another suspected ringleader, Sarfaraz, was arrested in the Indian city of Kolkata in December 2008. Sarfaraz, a Pakistani national, used to live in a flat in Dhaka with his Bangladeshi wife.
Similarly, Md Danish, a Pakistani, and his Bangladeshi wife, Fatema, were arrested in January 2010 with Tk10 lakh fake Indian rupees from the capital’s Rampura area.
During interrogation, Fatema disclosed that a few dozen Bangladeshi and Pakistani women, many of them married to Pakistani racketeers, were also involved in smuggling and selling fake currencies.