[natahololll]

In a nationwide crackdown on Pakistan-printed Indian fake currency, National Investigation Agency (NIA) arrested three persons from Chennai in the early hours of Monday. NIA has arrested 10 people who are part of the same network in different parts of the country in the last couple of days. Nine of the accused are natives of Malda district in West Bengal.

Habibul Rahman, 26, Abdul Mutalik, 25 and Prashant Mondal, 23, were arrested from Chennai suburb Pallikaranai, where they were working at a construction site -two as labourers and one as a supervisor.

The NIA team seized a large number of bank documents from the arrested.

Most arrested members of the network would constantly change their mobile numbers, which made it difficult to track them.

NIA sources said kingpin Mrjen Hussain, 23, was arrested in Malda on Saturday and the information he provided led to the arrest of Maink Sheik in Malda, Bahadur Yadav in New Delhi and Sajib-ulHaq, 20, M. Anwar, 21, Jamal Sheik, 24, and P.Akram, 19, in Hyderabad. The sources said the gang was operating at the behest of terror outfits and had connections with Pakistan and Bangladesh. The accused wanted to destabilise the Indian economy and threaten the country's internal security, they said.

The gang is believed to have circulated fakes with face value running into millions.

-dc chn