Shredded notes may be used to make fake currency: Police

Check your wallet. Are all the notes genuine? If the new method of counterfeiting is as effective as security agencies suspect, it would be very hard for most of us to identify a real note from a fake simply through touch and sight.

The finesse and apparent ease with which fake notes are being replicated — complete with many security features — has spurred a multi-agency probe by police and RBI. The investigation is focusing on whether shredded notes are being used to create the fake ones. Companies that purchase shredded notes from RBI could be a possible source, fear officials.

The Special Task Force that raided a godown in Domjur, Howrah, based on suspect Chandrashekhar's statements found 450 gunny bags packed with shredded Indian currency notes. These could then have been used by forgers.

RBI's currency management system uses a verification and processing system (VPS), which is an electro-mechanical device to examine, authenticate, count and destroy notes that are not fit for circulation. In this system, good notes are retrieved from the system in packets of 100 pieces. The rejected ones are kept aside and crosschecked manually before being destroyed by shredding.

RBI's Kolkata office introduced the mechanized currency verification and processing system around 2001-02. Initially, RBI faced difficulty in disposing shredded currency notes. Later, Kolkata Municipal Corporation came to the rescue and disposed the shredded notes at a dump site. Eventually, RBI introduced a system of inviting bids for disposing of the shredded currency.

According to a senior RBI official, in order to make the process foolproof, shredded notes are compacted in brick-like structures before being handed to agencies that win the bid. Also, the shredded notes are broken into small beads or granule-like structures. "It is almost impossible to reconstruct a currency note from those shredded pieces. Moreover, a variety of notes are shredded together and mixed while compacting in brick form. It is not possible to fish out pieces that can help in reconstructing a currency note," an RBI official said.

While RBI takes ample precautions up to this point, the security system then turns slack with no mechanism to track the shredded note bricks after they are handed over to agencies. Investigators believe Chandrashekhar Jaiswal carefully studied CVPS and got in touch with those who purchased the shredded notes from auction. Officials suspect the process of shredding may leave enough bits of security strips intact, which the racketeers have learnt to exploit.

When currency is prepared, the security thread is put inside notes using a special technique. Investigators are looking into the possibility of security threads being extracted from shredded notes and embedded in fake ones through master counterfeiters.

Source:-The Times of India