PATNA: Cash worth more than Rs 1 crore was seized from four people travelling in the AC coach of a Gujarat-bound express train before it left its source station, Danapur near Patna, on Sunday evening. The four people – two women and two men – were arrested by Railway Protection Force (RPF) personnel.
The seized currency notes were in denominations of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000, and they were the notes that were demonetised countrywide on November 8, said RPF officials. Just when the 19064 Danapur-Udhna Express train was going to pull out of Danapur station, nearly 5 km from Bihar capital Patna, RPF jawans entered the train and took the four people – two middle-aged men and the two women, all seemingly from lower middle-class families – into custody, they added. Udhna is near Surat in Gujarat.
“The four people travelling in B-1 coach of the train were found in possession of bags containing the currency notes of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500. They were brought down the train and taken to the RPF police station. When questioned, they remained tight-lipped and failed to give satisfactory explanations about who the cash belonged to and who it was being sent to,” said RPF inspector Raj Kishore Kushwaha. RPF was tipped off about the movement of such huge quantity of cash, he added.
The cash, believed to be black money in possession of members of the trading or political community in Bihar, was reportedly being transported to Gujarat. The four arrested people were forwarded to jail.
Sources said it is likely that the cash was being sent to some industrial house in Gujarat. “Some industrial houses in Gujarat were found paying the long-pending salaries of their employees in cash that was scrapped by the Centre. This cash from Bihar was likely to be used in such purposes in Gujarat,” said an RPF official.