Plainclothes policemen have raised an alarm over circulating fake local currency notes as several groups are becoming active ahead of the holy Ramadan in the capital.
The Detective Branch (DB) of police made the disclosure on Tuesday after arresting six members of an organised gang involved in the counterfeit currency circulation for the last several years.
Sources said the groups chose the holy month of fasting as their peak time when the money transaction normally goes up and each of the gangs planned to trade in forged currency notes to the tune of Tk 50 million (Tk 5 crore).
In a briefing at the DMP Media Cell, DB Deputy Commissioner (West) Sheikh Nazmul Alam said they raided a rented house on Adorsho Road in Madhya Monipur of Mirpur on Monday night on a tip-off and made the arrest.
He said they also recovered false currency notes worth Tk 5.0 million (Tk 50 lakh), three laptops, one desktop, three printers, fake security thread and other materials used for making such notes from their possession during the raid.
The detainees are Md Shafikul Islam Aka Shamim, Md Shohagh Adhikary, Md Shumon Ahmed, Md Baizid Uddin, Md Siddiqur Rahman, and Jesmin Akhter.
Citing preliminary interrogation of the detainees, he said the group had planned to inject Tk 50 million worth of fake local currency notes in the market throughout the month of Ramadan.
The senior police officer said members of the group were arrested on several occasions in the past on the same charges. But they reengaged in the same criminal activities after getting released on bail.
"Yes, it is very alarming as we've information that several such groups are targeting the upcoming Ramadan and Eid-ul-Fitr," he added.
Seeking anonymity, another official involved in the drive said persons engaged in such wrongdoings use computer-based technology for making fake notes of Tk 50, 100, 500 and 1000 denominations within several minutes and market those to cheat people like the uneducated, poor and elderly ones.
He said the syndicate of such criminals usually recruit women from lower income groups for circulating the fake notes and involvement of some unscrupulous bank officials with them was also found.
He said around 50 currency note forgers were arrested by the police from the DMP area in the last one year but unfortunately they came out of prisons on bail and re-engaged themselves in fake currency note trading.
The fake currency notes are manufactured mainly in two ways. One way is by printing scanned images of real notes onto high quality paper with gum and security ribbons.
On the other hand, they purchase the notes of Tk 100 denomination from Gulistan in the city at much higher rates and remove the print from the notes through boiling it with soap-mixed hot water or other form of liquid and the numbers are changed to give it the appearance of a Tk 500 note, he said.
The members of the syndicates sell these notes at 60 per cent commission. For example, a 100-taka fake note is sold forTk 40, a 500-taka fake note is sold for Tk 200 and a 1000-taka fake note is sold for taka 300 only, he added.
When contacted, a senior official of the Bangladesh Bank (BB) said they would install fake currency detection machines at the shopping malls and centres in the capital couple of weeks ahead of the upcoming Eid when monetary transaction usually goes up.
He said they already instructed all the banks to use fake currency detection machine at each of their branches.
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