Indian police on Sunday (9) arrested a man in Mumbai arrived from Dubai carrying fake Rs 2,000 notes worth Rs 2.4 million. The arrest was made with a CIA tip-off.
The high-quality notes had incorporated seven of nine security features.
The accused Javed Shaikh, 36, told police that the notes were printed in Pakistan and sent to Dubai. He collected it from there.
According to police, an average person could not identify the fake notes as they looked genuine.
Javed was caught at the bus stop outside the International terminal.
He has stuffed the notes in one of his bags and it took almost one hour for the police to locate it.
Scanners in the airport could not detect counterfeit currency as it was kept in a scattered format.
"A scanner identifies notes if they are kept in bundles. The edges of the bundle get detected," police said.
The two security features 'missing' from the fake currency were 'optically variable ink' (ink that changes colour with changing angles) and 'see-through register' (hidden features that are seen only if a note is held against the light).
US secretary of state Marco Rubio with India’s foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar in Washington DC last Tuesday (21)
Anit Mukherjee
V Muraleedharan
Dr Sasikumar S Sundaram
Workers clean communication equipment aboard INS Surat on January 11