The 2025 Hindi film Dhurandhar frames India’s fake currency battle as a familiar intelligence-versus-terror-state narrative. Public records and investigative files, however, reveal a far more uncomfortable reality. According to Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) documents, parliamentary records, intelligence assessments, and enforcement agency findings, the most damaging vulnerabilities in India’s currency security system emerged not across the border, but within India’s own decision-making apparatus.

Taken together, these records point to a chain of policy decisions and administrative compromises that, according to investigators, left India’s currency system vulnerable for years—conditions later exploited by Pakistan-based counterfeit networks.

Part I: The Architectural Gamble – The 2004 Monopoly Contract

Official records trace the origins of this controversy not to a Pakistani printing press, but to policy decisions taken in New Delhi in 2004. P Chidambaram, upon becoming Finance Minister in the first United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, oversaw a critical decision. In July 2004, his ministry authorised the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to enter into exclusivity agreements for certain banknote security features.

By September 2004, a contract was signed. The British firm De La Rue, a global leader in currency printing and security which had a long historical association with printing Pakistani currency, was granted an exclusive contract to supply a colour-shift security thread for Indian banknotes. This thread, a key anti-counterfeiting feature, changes colour when viewed from different angles.

Subsequent CBI findings and internal file notings flagged two structural problems with the contract from the outset. First, they noted that De La Rue did not possess a granted patent for this specific security thread technology at the time the monopoly agreement was signed. The company’s patent application was reportedly filed in June 2004, published in 2009, and only granted in 2011. This meant the legal basis for granting a monopoly on proprietary technology was arguably absent in 2004.

Second, reports citing internal memos stated that the contract lacked stringent exit clauses, locking India into a single-supplier arrangement without a clear mechanism to disengage if performance or security concerns arose.

What makes the arrangement more consequential is that internal objections surfaced early and repeatedly. By 2006, RBI internal notes allegedly flagged that De La Rue did not hold a valid patent. By 2007, the Security Printing and Minting Corporation of India Limited (SPMCIL) was said to have raised similar concerns about the patent status. Despite these internal red flags, the exclusive arrangement with De La Rue continued without competitive bidding.

The CBI’s January 2023 First Information Report (FIR) did not name Chidambaram as an accused. However, critics and reports argue that the architecture of single-vendor dependency in a critical national security area, established during his tenure, created a systemic vulnerability. The allegation, as framed in media analyses, is that this decision inadvertently allowed security features to stagnate, making them easier for counterfeiters to replicate over time.

Part II: The Enabler’s Signature – The 2013 Extension

Nearly a decade later, the issue re-emerged in a more serious administrative form. The original De La Rue contract had expired in 2009 but was kept alive through temporary extensions. In June 2013, Arvind Mayaram, then serving as the Finance Secretary in the Ministry of Finance, signed off on a three-year extension for De La Rue to continue supplying the colour-shift thread.

This act is the central focus of the CBI’s FIR No. RC0102023A0002, registered on January 23, 2023. The agency alleged that Mayaram, along with unknown officials of the Finance Ministry and representatives of De La Rue, entered into a criminal conspiracy.

The FIR lays out a set of procedural violations that investigators consider central to the case. They claimed the extension was granted in violation of established procedures. The agency alleged there was no mandatory security clearance from the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), and no approval was taken from the Finance Minister, despite internal file notings that explicitly required both. The FIR further alleged that Mayaram ignored earlier warnings about the patent issue and failed to apprise the political leadership of the associated risks.

Mayaram has publicly denied any wrongdoing. His defence, as reported, centred on the argument that continuity of supply was essential to avoid disrupting currency production, a matter of national importance. He maintained that all decisions were taken in the interest of the country and with due diligence.

However, the CBI’s central question, as reflected in its probe, was why continuity was prioritised over strict procedural compliance in a domain directly related to currency security. The FIR pointed out that De La Rue had already been under a cloud. In 2010, the MHA under then-Home Minister Pranab Mukherjee had reportedly blacklisted the firm after intelligence inputs and quality concerns, including allegations of supplying substandard paper and falsifying test certificates. The CBI’s case implied that granting a long-term extension in 2013, after this blacklisting and without fresh security clearance, was a serious procedural lapse.

The FIR also referenced suspicious financial transactions, noting that agencies had discovered that a De La Rue executive, Anil Raghbeer, had received approximately ₹8.2 crore in his offshore accounts in 2011, purportedly beyond his known salary. While the FIR did not directly link this to Mayaram, it cited these transactions as part of the broader suspicion of undue favour.

Part III: The Systemic Blind Spot – Warnings and Delays

Viewed chronologically, the record reflects a pattern of repeated warnings that failed to trigger corrective action. The sequence of events, as pieced together from media accounts citing investigative documents, is as follows:

2006-2007: Internal RBI and SPMCIL memos reportedly flag De La Rue’s lack of a valid patent.

2010: Security agencies raise concerns about De La Rue also supplying Pakistan. The MHA blacklists the firm after quality scandals.

2012: P Chidambaram returns as Finance Minister. Reports suggest the blacklisting was relaxed to a “restricted” category to allow “essential continuity” of supply.

June 2013: Arvind Mayaram signs the three-year extension, which the CBI alleges was done without security clearance or minister’s approval.

January 2023: The CBI registers its FIR, naming Mayaram, unknown officials, and De La Rue representatives.

The gap between the alleged acts and the formal investigation over a decade forms another layer of the story. Complaints and allegations had circulated for years in media and political circles. The CBI’s FIR came only in 2023, and as of late 2025, no chargesheet has been filed, leaving the legal outcomes pending.

Part IV: The Pakistani Nexus – Javed Khanani’s Shadow Network

Parallel to this administrative timeline in India, a covert financial war was being waged. This brings into focus the real-world counterpart to Dhurandhar’s villain: Javed Khanani.

Khanani was no cinematic caricature. Described as a soft-spoken, bespectacled businessman from Karachi, he was the co-owner of Khanani & Kalia International (KKI), a massive hawala (informal money transfer) network. In 2008, the U.S. Treasury Department designated KKI as a “significant transnational criminal organization,” alleging it laundered money for narcotics traffickers and terrorist groups, including those linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed.

Indian and international intelligence assessments, as reported over the years, described KKI as a key financial switchboard for Pakistani deep-state networks. Its role in the Fake Indian Currency Note (FICN) ecosystem was alleged to be critical. Investigative reports based on interrogations of captured operatives like Lashkar’s Abdul Karim Tunda described a pipeline: high-quality counterfeit notes printed in state-protected facilities in Pakistan, smuggled via Dubai, Nepal, and Bangladesh, and distributed within India. The proceeds from this FICN, along with other illicit funds, were allegedly cycled and settled through hawala networks like KKI.

The sophistication of the counterfeit notes was a major concern. Reports indicated that by the early 2010s, these “near-perfect” fakes, often printed on high-quality security paper, were flooding India, with annual inflows estimated by agencies to be worth ₹1,500-2,000 crore. This was characterized not as mere crime but as a form of economic warfare, funding terrorism and undermining monetary stability.

Part V: Convergence and Consequence

The troubling question that emerged from investigative journalism was whether India’s domestic procurement decisions inadvertently aided this external threat. The conjecture, often raised in analyses, was this: India’s long-term reliance on a single foreign supplier (De La Rue) for a key security feature, coupled with alleged delays in upgrading and diversifying sources, may have allowed Pakistani counterfeiters time to study and replicate security threads with alarming accuracy. While no public evidence proves a direct leak from De La Rue to Pakistan, the simultaneous decline in De La Rue’s reliability for India and the rise in quality of Pakistan-origin FICN raised uncomfortable suspicions.

The dramatic break in this cycle came with India’s demonetisation in November 2016. The overnight invalidation of ₹500 and ₹1,000 notes rendered vast stockpiles of FICN worthless, disrupting the entire smuggling and financing network. Reports at the time noted a sharp fall in FICN seizures in the following year.

In a stark postscript, just weeks after demonetisation, on 4 December 2016, Javed Khanani was found dead after a fall from an under-construction building in Karachi. Pakistani police called it a suicide, while his family termed it an accident. No thorough medico-legal autopsy was widely reported. In intelligence and financial circles, as reported by journalists covering the region, whispers suggested his death was linked to the massive financial disruption and liabilities caused by demonetisation, though no evidence of foul play was officially established.

The Unresolved Thriller

Dhurandhar offers a cathartic, fictional conclusion. The real story, as documented in CBI files and investigative reports, remains open-ended and legally unresolved. It presents a complex picture where allegations of procedural bypasses and monopolistic contracts in Delhi intersect with a shadow war of terrorism finance orchestrated from Pakistan.

The CBI’s case against Arvind Mayaram is sub judice; he maintains his innocence. P Chidambaram is not named in the FIR, though his ministerial decisions are scrutinized in the court of public opinion. The broader allegation that emerges from this assemblage of reports is not of outright treason, but of a bureaucratic and political complacency that may have, over a decade, left a critical national security system, currency integrity, exposed.

This is a half-told tale: a thriller where the villains are not cartoonish foreigners, but the gatekeepers of the system itself, and where the climax is not a heroic raid, but a slow, grinding investigation battling against time, politics, and the weight of files. It is a story that underscores how economic warfare is often enabled not just by enemies abroad, but by vulnerabilities at home.

Source: Businessworld

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