BHOPAL: Twenty-one months after the Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government demonetized Rs 500 old and Rs 1000 currency notes, an inter-state racket dealing in the same defunct twin currency was busted in Madhya Pradesh on Thursday evening.
Acting on specific inputs from the state police’s anti-terror squad’s (ATS) Khandwa unit, the Indore police arrested three men with the defunct twin currency notes totalling Rs 1 crore. The arrest and seizure were made from Bhawarkuan area of Indore.
The three arrested men were identified as 60-year-old Habib Khan, a resident of Ahmadabad, Surat resident Shoaib and Bhusawal (Maharashtra) resident Imran, the Bhawarkuan police station in-charge Sanjay Shukla told The New Indian Express.
“We seized demonetized currency worth Rs one crores comprising Rs 83 lakh in the denomination of 1000 rupee currency notes and remaining Rs 17 lakh in the denomination of 500 rupee old currency notes,” said Shukla.
The seized currency was sourced from Aurangabad in Maharashtra after paying 10% (Rs 10 lakh in new currency notes) to an operator. The currency was to be supplied to a trader in Gujarat’s Surat, who had been promised by another player to convert these defunct notes into new currency notes in return for 25% of the sum, added Shukla.
The arrested trio is merely a carrier of the demonetized currency, as the actual players involved in this illegal deal are based in Gujarat and Maharashtra. The duo’s questioning by the Indore police and MP ATS sleuths is likely to help the cops make further inroads into this big inter-state currency dealing in the demonetized twin high-value currency.