VIJAYAWADA: Vijayawada police on Tuesday arrested seven persons in possession of banned currency notes of Rs 1,000 denomination to the tune of Rs 1 crore. Acting on a tip-off that Chennai engineering student and middle-man Jutiga Nageswar Rao is trying to exchange demonetised currency, Task force and Patamata police led a joint operation.
According to police, Jayachandran, a Chennai based realtor, had black money to the tune of Rs 5 crores out of which he exchanged Rs 3 crore. The middle-man duped him with fake currency. To exchange the remaining black money, Jayachandran had set up an agreement with Nageswara Rao through his friend Ramesh Jain, a realtor. Nageswar Rao had been to many a place in the state and finally reached Vijayawada. He approached his circles offering 75 per cent of the old currency notes on spot to get them exchanged to new currency notes.
Speaking to press persons, Joint Commissioner B.V. Ramana Kumar said, “In the light of a petition in the Supreme court seeking grace period to exchange demonetised notes, fraudsters are cheating people by offering a big amount in invalid notes in exchange of valid notes.” He added that people should be aware that old currency is null and void and should not get attracted to any such offer.
The other arrested persons are Yenuga Ramuthy, Vemuri Suneetha, Tirupati Nirmala Devi, Pasupuleti Vayanandana Rao, Chekka Sudhakar, Sonti Vijaya Jyothi from Machilipatnam. While Ramuthy is from Chennai, rest hail from Vijayawada. A case under Section 7 of Cessation of Liabilities Act 2017 and IPC 406, 420, 120 (B) has been registered with Patamata police station.