FACT AND FICN IN BIHAR

On the night of May 22, the police in Patna got a tip-off that liquor was being sold out of a flat in Rajaram Apartments in the posh Srikrishna Puri locality. Bihar being a ‘dry state’, the cops quickly arranged a late-night swoop. The raid yielded a lot more than a few liquor bottles—there was Rs 1.8 lakh in counterfeit currency (in Rs 500 and Rs 200 denominations) and banknotes printed on paper sheets, ready to be cut out and circulated. A full counterfeit cottage industry, in fact: printers, paper sheets, a cutting machine and laptop.

- Amitabh Srivastava

Three of the accused managed to flee, but the cops arrested two other young men in their 20s—Ayub Khan and Ratan Yadav. Khan, who broke his leg in an abortive bid to escape, is the son of a policeman. He was staying in Patna to prepare for the civil service exams and, reportedly, was inspired by the OTT series Farzi to try his hand at the fake currency racket. He has since confessed to travelling to Nepal to learn the techniques for printing counterfeit currency. A series of FICN (fake Indian currency note) busts in the past few months—from Ayub Khan to third-year college student Rahul Vadodaria in Gujarat (arrested on May 1 with 134 fake notes of Rs 100 denomination) to the five men arrested in Noida with FICN of face value Rs 6.5 lakh in April—seems to indicate that several amateurs have gotten into the game.

DESPITE THE FAKE CURRENCY LINKS TO BIHAR, THERE HAVE BEEN VERY FEW SEIZURES IN THE STATE

What is common among many of the counterfeiting cases from the past 2-3 years is a Bihar connection. The accused in the Noida arrests had identified a Singhania from Chh apra district who printed the notes for them.