Peshawar police bust forgery ring

PESHAWAR: Peshawar police on Friday apprehended an inter-provincial gang involved in printing and distributing counterfeit currency on a large scale.
The police arrested four people who were carrying more than 10.5 million Pakistani rupees in fake currency, in addition to seizing some semi-prepared UAE dirhams along with the machines used in the process.
Speaking to Arab News, Capital City Police Officer (CCPO) Mohammed Tahir said the police conducted the raid following a tip-off and intercepted the gang’s vehicles in Pishtakhara village, located in the southwest of Peshawar city.
Further interrogation led to the recovery of machines used to produce fake currency, including printers, note-cutters, computers, coating and roll machines, paper, and 2,000 semi-prepared fake dirham notes.
Dr. Sajjad Ahmed Jan, assistant professor of economics at the University of Peshawar, told Arab News that counterfeit currency notes caused inflation as well as damage to society.
“When circulation of fake notes increases in an area, it creates demand for various products and as a result the prices hike. It also decreases the value of real money and traders suffer losses when they receive counterfeit money in abundance for their products,” he explained.
A member of the Pishtakhara police station, whose staff carried out the operation, told Arab News that it was difficult to differentiate between the seized fake notes and genuine money.
“As a test, we gave the notes to a few colleagues without telling them it is fake currency and they accepted it as original. Later, we took the money back and told them that it is fake,” Hilal Khan said.
Tahir said the investigation is ongoing and the police are trying to discover whether the suspects have ties to any international gangs. He also said that forgery cases fall under the jurisdiction of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA).
When contacted, the head of the FIA in Peshawar, Iftikhar Khan, said that a major challenge in their actions against forgers and dealers is that most fake-currency factories are located in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), which is out of the FIA’s jurisdiction. He said sometimes fake currency is also brought across the porous border with Afghanistan.
“There are the manufacturers who make the fake notes then there are those who market and distribute them,” he said. “They mix the counterfeit money in with original money. For example, they might include 15 fake notes in a bundle of a few thousand.”
He added that dealers of fake notes select “mobile” shops and markets.
“Mostly people dealing in mobile markets like cattle markets use them because the recipient of the fake notes does not know how, or to whom, to return that money,” he explained.