The Special Task Force of the West Bengal Police has busted an alleged cross-border espionage and smuggling ring in northern Bengal’s Cooch Behar district, arresting three men suspected of working on behalf of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence. The trio, identified as Rashidul Haque, Nur Nasiruddin Ali, and Shafiqul Islam, was nabbed late Friday evening during a targeted raid in the Sahebganj area of Dinhata. Police believe the group served as a key ground cell inside the country, securing pre-activated Indian mobile SIM cards using fake identity papers and smuggling them into Pakistan through transit routes in neighboring Bangladesh.
Alongside the telecommunications racket, investigators found that the group was running a counterfeit currency operation, printing and pushing fake Indian banknotes into local markets to fund their logistics without leaving an easy money trail. The three suspects were presented before a local court on Saturday, which sent them to police custody for 14 days. Counter-espionage officers plan to use the remand period to question the men, trace where the seized materials originated, and pinpoint the handlers coordinating the cross-border pipeline.
The arrests follow tightened border surveillance across West Bengal after several intelligence operatives were caught along frontier zones in recent months. Investigators are examining potential links between this Dinhata module and Pakistani national Rana Rauf, alias Wahab Alam, who was recently caught near the border while tracking sensitive security installations with forged Indian documents. Forensic and cyber teams are analyzing the seized phones, storage drives, call records, and banking transactions to uncover any wider sleeper network operating along the border corridor.