New Delhi, Feb 15 (HT) : After the demonetisation, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) made its first recovery of three fake Indian currency notes of Rs 2,000 which investigators say ‘appear’ to be of high quality.

“Following the introduction of new currency notes of Rs 2,000 and Rs 500, there have been around half a dozen cases where fake currency notes in the denomination of Rs 2,000 were recovered but their quality of far inferior. Most of them were just scanned copy of the note. But the recovery made on Tuesday by our investigators appear to be of high quality,” said a senior NIA official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The agency said it arrested an absconding accused Umar Faruq, a native of Malda in West Bengal, in a two-year-old case of Fake India Currency Smuggling (FICN).

Faruq was on his way to hand over the samples of the fake Rs 2,000 notes to another FICN racketeer when he was picked up.

“The note appeared to be high quality but as of now we don’t know how many security features of the new Rs 2000 currency note have been imitated by the smugglers. The notes have been sent for a forensic analysis for detailed study,” added the official.

Before the recovery made by the NIA on Tuesday, the West Bengal police have also registered a case in connection with a recovery, of 40 fake Rs 2000 notes, made by the BSF at Indo-Bangladesh border.

“Their quality is also looks better than the scanned print outs recovered earlier. But that case is not with the NIA,” said the official.

The NIA takes up probe of only those cases where the recovered fake currency is high quality ,where most of the security features of the Indian currency are found to be imitated, and also when involvement of organised networks from across the border is suspected. Before the Tuesday’s recovery from Faruq, the agency had not taken over probe into any of recoveries of fake currency made across the country after the demonetization on November 8 due to their inferior quality.

The government had argued that smuggling of the FICN from across the border was one of the reasons of demonetisation of old currency notes in the denomination of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000.