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Currency of different denominations have different security features. Over a dozen such features can be incorporated in a currency note, say experts. Here are three of the features incorporated in a currency note of Rs 1000 denomination issued by the RBI.
- The white space on the left will make the Mahatma Gandhi watermark visible once it is placed against light.
- There is a diamond shaped black identification mark on the left for the visually impaired.
- The vertical security line in the middle will appear to be green or blue from different angles and will have “ RBI” and “Bharat” in fine-print.
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Chandigarh, August 4
There is a machine to detect counterfeit currency. But it is not available in the market. While scientists at the Central Scientific Instruments Organisation ( CSIO) not only developed an Automatic Counterfeit Currency Detector (ACCD) and secured international patents, for yet unknown reasons nobody has come forward to manufacture and market it commercially.
“There are people interested in buying the device or selling it but not for manufacturing them”, said Dr H.K. Sardana, Additional Director CSIO, who led the ACCD team. “We are again having a dialogue though with 2-3 firms for transfer of technology,” he hastened to add. CSIO scientists claimed that no such machine is being manufactured in India.
Banks have,however, installed “note sorting machines” that detect the genuineness of a currency note on the basis of the paper’s characteristics and response to ultraviolet light exposure. However, unlike the ACCD, they are not currency or country specific and do not take into account security features, the scientists claimed.
Banks have also issued locally made ultra violet lamps to their branches where a suspected note is manually placed for detection. Bankers say that an experienced cashier can detect a counterfeit by its “feel and texture” while counting. The RBI tested the device developed by the CSIO last year. The results were said to be satisfactory but RBI officials wanted CSIO to make certain modifications. While the earlier machine would stop whenever it detected a counterfeit currency note, RBI wanted scientists to develop a machine that would throw out the counterfeit currency but continue to do the counting.
There are imported machines available in the market though, costing about Rs 50,000 but they can cater to just one manually fed note at a time. The ACCD, the prototype version of which cost about as much, has six sensors and a counting speed of 600-1000 notes per minute. Earlier, the CSIO had developed a small device to check the genuineness of a single note at a time. It was patented but its transfer of technology to the industry was not pursued and the concepts developed were applied for the ACCD project.
The biggest challenge in detecting counterfeit currency, say security experts, is that they are very close to the real thing. “It is no longer the play of criminals coming with a limited number of fakes that can be detected by a close look. The counterfeits are being churned out by agencies that have access to both technology and materials required to print genuine currency,” an intelligence official remarked.
