Theatres are currently alight with debate over Dhurandhar’s unflinching portrayal of Pakistan’s underworld. Yet, amidst the on-screen action, the movie drops a geopolitical bombshell: the assertion that the high-quality Fake Indian Currency Notes (FICN) flooding the Indian economy could only have been produced with inside help—specifically, by someone in India providing the blueprint of the security features to hostile foreign entities for massive kickbacks.

This cinematic accusation forces a critical, urgent look at the FICN menace, the highly controversial political decisions regarding currency security, and why the Demonetization of 2016 became a necessary, if painful, national security measure.

The Real-Life Financial Architects: The Khanani Nexus

The movie accurately frames the criminal infrastructure needed to sustain this economic war by featuring two brothers, Javed Khanani and Altaf Khanani, who run a massive Hawala and fake currency operation. This aspect is chillingly factual.

The Altaf Khanani Money Laundering Organization (MLO) was a real, massive, transnational criminal organization designated by the U.S. Treasury in 2015 as a TCO for laundering billions for terror groups including the Taliban, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT), and Dawood Ibrahim’s D-Company.

Their exchange company, Khanani & Kalia International (KKI), was a major foreign exchange operator in Pakistan that provided the infrastructure to move illicit funds globally, making them the perfect financial clearing house for the FICN operation.

The Khananis were the essential “bankers” of the underworld—the bridge between the producers of the FICN and the distributors.

The Printing: State-Level Apparatus and The “Third Shift”

The cinematic representation of the printing location, placing it within the commercial premises of the Khanani & Kalia corporation, is factually inaccurate but serves a crucial narrative function. The reality behind the production of the high-quality FICN is far more alarming, pointing directly to a hostile state actor.

The True Printing Site: Pakistan Security Printing Corporation (PSPC)

The fake currency was not printed at a commercial press; it was, as strongly alleged by Indian intelligence, produced at the Pakistan Security Printing Corporation (PSPC) facilities—the very entity responsible for printing Pakistan’s own legal tender.

The “Third Shift” Allegation: The common theory suggests that the ISI, the orchestrator of this economic war, mandated a “Third Shift” at the PSPC. While two shifts handled the printing of Pakistani Rupees and other security documents, the clandestine third shift was dedicated solely to the mass production of Indian FICN.

The sheer quality of the counterfeit notes—the reason Indian intelligence was able to make such a serious allegation—was the forensic evidence. By the mid-2000s, intelligence inputs confirmed that the highest quality FICN matched as many as 10 out of the 14 key security parameters used by the Indian government at the time.

This level of precision transformed the issue from mere crime to a sophisticated act of high treason because it required mastering technologies restricted to sovereign governments:

Security Feature	Why it Proves State-Level Collusion
Intaglio Printing (Raised Print)	This technique gives notes their unique, palpable, raised texture (felt on the portrait, seal, and identification marks). Producing this with perfection requires multi-ton, million-dollar intaglio presses and highly durable steel printing plates. Criminals use digital methods that leave the print flat and dull; the FICN’s success proved access to official equipment.
Perfect Back-to-Back Registration	Features like the See-Through Register (a floral design or denomination numeral printed exactly half on the front and half on the reverse, aligning as one image when held against light) demand micron-level precision in printing drums and synchronization. Commercial printers cannot maintain this flawless registration across millions of notes.
Security Thread Embedding	The unique, windowed security thread (reading ‘Bharat’ and ‘RBI’ in the old series) is woven into the paper during the manufacturing process, not printed on top. To replicate this perfectly, the ISI needed to know the exact composition of the security paper and the specifications of the thread itself.

The ability of a hostile state to match these parameters was the “red flag” for the entire Indian security establishment. This perfection confirms that it was not a matter of brilliant reverse-engineering, but of compromised access. The only way the ISI could consistently achieve this was by having access to:

a) A State-Level Printing Press (Patronage): Confirmed by the printing quality.

b) The Exact Security Feature Blueprints, Plates, or Paper Specifications (Compromise):

This brings us to the political insinuation that the movie makes. The movie makes two bombshell allegations, both rooted in the documented policy decisions of the UPA era (2004–2014) when P. Chidambaram held the powerful post of Union Finance Minister for significant periods.

Allegation 1 (Factually Correct): The Compromised Supply Chain

The first bombshell allegation made by the film is not mere speculation, but a direct reflection of a documented national security failure—the disastrous reliance on a compromised international supply chain for India’s currency paper.

India was tragically dependent on foreign sources for the high-security paper used for printing banknotes. This dependency meant nearly 95% of India’s high-security paper was imported from a select group of global players, most famously the British security giant, De La Rue (UK) (whose name is altered in the movie, but whose role is unmistakable). This created a Vicious Cycle of Vulnerability. It is a known fact that Pakistan also procured security paper or similar materials from De La Rue. This provided the hostile state actor with a near-perfect starting material, as the ISI effectively had access to the exact chemical composition, security fibers, and critical paper characteristics used for genuine Indian currency, all thanks to a shared, compromised international supply chain. This environment provided the perfect cover for the hostile state.

The British company was under the cloud of multiple, severe global investigations as well. It faced a major probe by the UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) over allegations of “falsified documents” related to quality checks, with some production failures specifically speculated to have affected the Indian contract. Furthermore, due to reported failures in paper quality and security concerns, the Union Home Ministry did, in fact, reportedly blacklist De La Rue.

This is where the political controversy deepens. The crisis happened because the finance ministry (read finance minister) allegedly continued to favour De La Rue despite its credibility being severely compromised and Indian intelligence having provided serious forensic evidence of a breach. And failed to decisively cut off all ties and vigorously pursue indigenization. This perceived favouritism, even when the company’s integrity was globally questioned and India’s financial sovereignty was demonstrably at risk, fuelled the suspicion that powerful politicians were actively maintaining the import dependency. The conclusion drawn by critics was damning: the financial kickbacks and corruption allegedly generated by these massive import contracts were simply more compelling than the national security imperative to produce currency paper at home. The system itself was engineered to sustain corruption, even if it meant risking the entire economy.

Allegation 2: The Political Compromise of Blueprints

This leads to the movie’s second, darker allegation—the final, devastating question of how the enemy acquired the technology. The film asserts that the high-quality plates or security blueprints were acquired by the Khanani brothers through a betrayal facilitated by an Indian politician and his son.

The film ties this insinuation to P. Chidambaram, who was the Union Finance Minister when decisions regarding currency security features and FIPB clearances were being made. The reference to the “son” points directly to Karti Chidambaram, who has faced various corruption and money-laundering charges, including the high-profile INX Media case which ultimately led to the arrest of the former minister himself.

This specific allegation—that the plates were physically acquired and sold by the ministerial family—has not been substantiated by any court or investigative agency. However, the political controversy is rooted in a devastating piece of logic: given the state-level perfection of the counterfeits and the confirmed corruption surrounding the foreign currency paper contracts, critics argue that a high-level compromise was the only plausible explanation for the breach.

As you correctly deduce, whether it was the Minister, his son, or another politician is debatable, but the core political conclusion remains fixed: the breach occurred during that specific UPA era of deep import dependency. The system failed at the highest level of trust, whether through negligence or deliberate betrayal. The question thus shifts from who did it, to the existential concern: How was this devastating, decades-long security failure finally addressed, and was the fix effective?

This pivot brings us to the most crucial phase of the crisis—the post-2014 corrective action that dramatically changed the landscape of India’s financial security.

🇮🇳 The Systemic Failure: The Final Fix

The crisis, rooted in a corruptible import structure, was a national security emergency. India uses around 22,000 metric tons of security paper every year, accounting for at least 40% of the total cost of manufacturing money. Yet, for decades, India refused to achieve self-sufficiency, leaving this massive vulnerability open.

“Quite interestingly, what the UPA government with highly educated/Harward educated Ministers and Bureaucrats failed to fix, a government ran by a chai wala fixed it in less than seven years.”

The government that took power post-2014 addressed the issue with two decisive, high-stakes actions, directly challenging the corruption and compromise of the previous era:

1. Indigenization: Achieving Financial Sovereignty

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, included currency paper indigenization in his flagship Make In India program (a policy often mocked by the opposition at the time), prioritized fixing this structural vulnerability.

The Political Will: The technical difficulties cited as “unsolvable” for decades suddenly vanished. The government not only ramped up production at the existing Security Paper Mill (SPM) but also established a new, high-capacity joint-venture mill in Mysore.

The Result: By 2021, India achieved nearly complete self-sufficiency. The subsequent need to import security paper ceased, effectively removing the ISI’s primary, compromised point of technological access to the blueprint of India’s currency paper.

2. Demonetization: The Decapitation Strike

The second, most drastic measure was the Demonetization of high-value banknotes on November 8, 2016.

This strategic move instantly rendered the vast stockpiles of the old high-value notes (which comprised 86% of currency value and nearly all FICN) worthless, delivering a decisive, decapitating blow to the ISI-FICN nexus. The Ministry of Home Affairs confirmed that demonetization led to the “instant extinguishment of Pak-printed high quality fake Indian currency notes.”

The same political leaders who presided over the era of import dependency and security vulnerability fiercely fought the decision on the streets. They aggressively pushed the narrative that Demonetization was a failure because it didn’t eliminate black money held in assets and caused economic disruption. Their relentless focus on the economic chaos ignored the fundamental, inconvenient truth: the national security rationale of nullifying the enemy’s decade-long economic attack weapon.

The movie Dhurandhar forces the audience to confront this inconvenient truth: the extraordinary measure of Demonetization was needed to clean up a decades-long security failure—a failure that was arguably rooted not in incompetence, but in the political decision to maintain a profitable import dependency that left India’s financial sovereignty exposed.

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Also read:

• The Cash Nexus: Criminals and Politics
• Modi gov’s surgical strike(s) on Black Money
• MPLADS and Corruption!