ONCE SYNONYMOUS WITH MAFIA, UP NOW STANDS AS INDIA'S SHIELD AGAINST ECONOMIC TERRORISM

In a dimly lit room in Bollywood's spy-thriller Dhurandhar, R. Madhavan's Ajay Sanyal—loosely inspired by NSA Ajit Doval—fixes his subordinate with a deadly glare as intelligence lands like a grenade.

- SHEHZAD POONAWALLA

Pakistani forgers in Karachi are churning out near-authentic fake rupees, laundering them through Qatar, routing them across Nepal's porous borders and flooding Uttar Pradesh.“We crack terror nests in Karachi,” Sanyal asks, “but these UP mafia labs—off limits?” The aide’s reply is blunt: the state government is stonewalling. The comeback is prophetic—time will equalise, and Uttar Pradesh will one day elect leaders who bleed for the nation.

That brief exchange has sent the internet into a froth. Critics dismiss the film as “saffron scripting”, branding director Aditya Dhar a political hype man. Yet the spine of the scene is not fiction. It mirrors the arc of Uttar Pradesh since 2017, when goondaraj began giving way to governance and data punctured the nostalgia of the old order.

UP BEFORE 2017: A STATE WITHIN A STATE

Rewind to Akhilesh-era Uttar Pradesh, when mafia dons such as Atiq Ahmed and Mukhtar Ansari operated as sitting MLAs while lodged in jail. Organised crime drained nearly Rs. 10,000 crore annually, according to India Foundation estimates. Crime networks spanning land, mining, extortion and trafficking functioned as a parallel government, entrenched through political patronage and fear.

HOW FAKE CURRENCY BECAME A PARALLEL ECONOMY

India’s counterfeit crisis deepened through the 1990s and early 2000s as Pakistan's ISI pivoted to economic warfare. Near-authentic notes were printed using advanced watermark technology and specialised inks sourced from Europe. The aim was not petty theft but financial destabilisation—injecting fake liquidity to fund terror, erode trust in the rupee and weaken the economy from within.

By 2014, counterfeit currency had hardened into a shadow economy worth thousands of crores. Pakistan printed it, cross-border smugglers moved it, and Uttar Pradesh's mafia networks ensured it entered circulation undetected.