LUCKNOW: On the face of it, Dumariaganj may appear to be just another countryside locality. So why did the gang involved in the fake Indian currency notes (FICN) racket choose this township to pump in counterfeit currency through the State Bank of India (SBI's) branch? This was one question which baffled the investigators for quite sometime till they gathered some details of the bank's financial transactions during the course of investigations. "We thought if Dumariaganj's proximity with Nepal - which is seen as the source of FICN - was the reason then there were innumerable other districts where banks had a bigger commercial clientele than Dumariaganj could offer and hence would be dealing in heavier volumes of cash than the Dumariaganj branch.

So why not any of them?" wondered additional superintendent of police (ASP) S Anand who heads Anti Organised Crime Cell (AOCC) of the Special Task Force (STF). Investigators were shocked to learn that Dumariaganj had much more to offer than anyone could think of. "With almost 35 per cent of the families in the area having one or more family members employed abroad, specially the Gulf and metros like Mumbai, the branch deals with a good quantum of foreign exchange and international draft transactions which those working in the Gulf send to their families," explained Inspector Avinash Misra, the AOCC officer who led the entire operation on ground.

After his arrest, Sudhakar told investigators that since the SBI branch had the RBI chest it fed cash to more than 35 branches of different banks in the area. The branch saw daily cash transactions of anything between Rs 1 crore and Rs 1.5 crore. The bank's ATMs in the region had a daily flow of over Rs 20 lakh in cash. No wonder the chest had Rs 184 crore in cash when the racket came to light. According to Sudhakar, this was the reason why mixing counterfeit currency - that too of Rs 1000 and Rs 500 denomination- with the genuine ones was easy at this branch of SBI. The FICN was mostly mixed in the chest itself.

Once the other banks withdrew cash from the chest, it remained virtually impossible to track the source of the fake notes. Though Sudhakar's co-accused Abid claimed that anything between Rs 5 lakh and Rs 7 lakh in FICN was mixed with the genuine currency notes in a fortnight, investigators believe that the amount was put in every alternate day. The Rs 7.2 lakh in genuine currency that was seized from Sudhakar's rented accommodation was apparently the payment of the last 48 hours only.

Recovery of over Rs 1.25 crore in FICN from the Dumariaganj branch by the RBI team also adds credence to the STF theory that the accused were putting in anything between Rs 3 lakh and Rs 5 lakh every day. According to Sudhakar the "exchange rate" - as an STF officer jokingly described it - of FICN with the genuine currency was fixed at 65. This means that every Rs 100 in FICN, fetched the gang Rs 65 in genuine currency. The remaining 35 per cent was forwarded to the person who was supplying the FICN.