Fake currency racket, Babri riot shadow over Mumbai’s suspects

Shahidunnisa could not make out anything but she handed over the letter to his son, he left for Delhi in a day or two and went missing for around three months.

Later, a communication from the local police station said he was in Tihar jail. Police said that he was arrested for being involved in a counterfeit currency racket. He was in jail for less than a month and was back again in Basoppatti.

From Basopatti, it just takes a 45-minute motorcycle ride to Nepal’s Janakpur town, one of the many corridors which the ISI utilises to run its counterfeit currency racket in India according to the police. ‘‘Unemployed youths aspiring for easy money in the border villages become easy prey for ISI’s counterfeit currency drive run through the porous border with Nepal,’’ says Basopatti police station officer in-charge Ranjan Prasad Singh. Police and locals say Kamal used to very frequently visit Janakpur and come riding different kinds of motorbikes every time, which raised eyebrows as he was unemployed.

But the mother won’t believe the charges. ‘‘He is innocent. He has been trapped by our family rivals,’’ she said. Kamal, who dropped out of school after Class V, used to work in Delhi as a tailor but moved back to his village after his marriage 11 years ago. His house is in a slum inside the rural market. Police raids so far have yielded nothing. The mother says the explosive that Mumbai police claim to have recovered was cement.

His mother says he used to borrow from her and his brothers to feed his family of six. Kamal’s late father was an army tailor and the mother gets Rs 2,500 every month as pension. He does, however, have a mobile phone and a landline with a caller ID. ‘‘Why the caller ID? It is unusual for a place like Basopatti,’’ said an officer.

Kamal’s mother accepted that many missed calls from Mumbai had come on her son’s mobile from Mumbai on July 16. On the next day, too, someone had called on the landline from Mumbai and wanted to know his mobile number. She said they used get calls regularly from Mumbai as her brother and son-in-law—Mumtaz who is married to Kamal’s sister—stay there.

‘‘He had political aspirations and wanted to rise in life but he cannot be a terrorist. He is the son of an Armyman. How can he be a terrorist?’’ she says.