Arrested Bangladeshi national sent `45 lakh to hometown in a year

The Bangladeshi national arrested during a raid at a bar in Karnak Bunder in January had sent more than Rs45 lakh to his hometown in the last one year, the Mumbai police have found.

The Bangladeshi national arrested during a raid at a bar in Karnak Bunder in January had sent more than Rs45 lakh to his hometown in the last one year, the Mumbai police have found.

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Considering that he earned only Rs10,000-12,000 as a waiter at the bar every month, the police have alerted the Enforcement Directorate and Income Tax officials about the transaction.

During the raid conducted on the bar last month, police had recovered Aadhaar and PAN card from Shabir Shaikh, who had lived in the city for just six years. “While searching his residence at P D’mello Road, we found that he had two savings accounts in nationalised banks. The entries in the passbooks showed that he had sent Rs45 lakh to Bangladesh in one year. He had opened those accounts using fake documents,” said a police official.

Shaikh, however, claimed that he had sent the money, belonging to several illegal Bangladeshis, on their behalf. According to sources, Shaikh would first deposit the money in his account and then transfer it to the other accounts in 24 Parganas district of West Bengal. One of the accounts belonged to a woman named Arpita Biswas. Biswas’s husband would withdraw the money from ATM kiosks and pass it on to cross-border agents, who would smuggle it to Bangladesh. Shaikh claimed that he was paid 10 per cent of each deposit made in his account, of which a portion went to Arpita Biswas.

Not willing to buy the theory, police suspect that Shaikh could be a conduit for fake Indian currency syndicate in the city, which originates in Bangladesh. The syndicate collects genuine Indian currency in exchange of fake currency. The money is then smuggled back into Bangladesh, where it is obtained by terror groups for their operatives in India.

Inspector Rajan Rane of the Special Branch confirmed that the ED and IT have been roped into the investigation.