New Delhi-Lahore bus brings fake currency

For the first time since the start of New Delhi-Lahore bus service, fake Indian currency with a face value of Rs 2.85 lakh was seized on Wednesday from an elderly lady passenger at the border in Attari.

For the first time since the start of New Delhi-Lahore bus service, fake Indian currency with a face value of Rs 2.85 lakh was seized on Wednesday from an elderly lady passenger at the border in Attari.

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The fake currency notes in the denomination of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 were detected in the possession of 62-year-old Bano Begum, a resident of Delhi, who was returning from Lahore by the bus, an officer at the border said.

She was carrying the notes in an especially created cavity of a dinner set, he said.

Though fake currency is almost routinely seized in the Samjhauta Express train, it is for the first time that an international passenger was caught while trying to smuggle fake Indian currency from Pakistan by the bus, Intelligence sources said.

However, a packet of heroin with a street value of nearly Rs one crore was found in Lahore-New Delhi bus two days back prompting customs and immigration authorities at the border to step up vigil as they checked all buses coming from Pakistan, they said.

The Customs Department had intelligence inputs that Pakistan-based smugglers could try to push in fake currency and drug by the bus, officials at the border said.