A Pakistani national has been arrested with 50 lakh Indian currencies at the capital’s Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport on Sunday morning.
Customs Department officials detained the 35-year-old Pakistani national identified as Abdur Rahim at the Canopy Area of the airport.
The currencies were seized by searching his luggage, said Hossain Ahmed, Commissioner of the Customs Department at the airport.
The customs commissioner suspected that the currencies might have been fake.
“Unless the currencies are verified, we cannot say whether the currencies are real or fake”, he said.
Sources at the airport said Rahim had arrived at Dhaka on July 7 on a flight of the Qatar Airways, however he left the airport without his luggage and he went to the airport in the morning for receiving his luggage and was arrested with the currencies.
The customs officials said they had been trying to identify the associates of the Pakistani in Bangladesh.
Earlier on June 30, 2 more Pakistani nationals, including a young woman, were arrested with 1.71cr of fake Indian rupees immediately after their arrival at Dhaka airport.
In the last few years they seized around 200 crore of fake Indian currencies by arresting around 60 Pakistanis, most of whom belong to different militant organisations active in Bangladesh, Pakistan and India like Jama’atul Mujahedeen Bangladesh (JMB) and Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) and Pakistan based Lashkar-e-Taiba, said sources in the customs department, CIID, Detective Branch, Rab and intelligence.
The sources also said Indian currencies are usually forged in Pakistan as a part of militant financing and they are usually smuggled into India through Bangladesh in different ways, the sources said.
“Almost 90 percent of the currencies seized by arresting Pakistani nationals are found to be fake,” said Qamrul Hasan, assistant commissioner of the Customs Department at Hajarat Shahjalal International Airport.
Joint Commissioner Monirul Islam of Detective Branch (DB) of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) earlier said a large portion of income from the forged currencies was being provided to JMB, HuJI and other outfits.
According to sources, a large number of rackets are engaged in the smuggling of gold and currencies using the airports in Bangladesh.
Among the hauls, Pakistani national Asimullah Khan, 40, was arrested on April 3 with fake Rs8.8 million that was seized at the Dhaka airport.
In March last year, DB personnel arrested 12 militant leaders, including 4 Pakistani nationals, with Indian fake currencies worth Tk1.29 crore.
Pakistani nationals Sabbir, Md Danish and his Bangladeshi wife Fatema were arrested with fake Rs10 lakh at Rampura on January 18, in 2010.
On December 18, in 2009, Pakistani woman Rubina and Bangladeshi national Solaiman Majumdar, who was said to be linked to the ISI and LeT, was arrested with fake Rs10 lakh.
Among other detained Pakistani nationals, Mobasshar Shahed was arrested with fake currencies of Rs15 lakh, Zahid Hasan with Rs 10 lakh, Abdullah Ali with Rs 1 crore, Sabakat Ali with Rs 41 lakh, Wahid Ali with Rs 90 lakh and Sahadat Ali with Rs 40 lakh from 2011 to April of this year.
