Biggest Note Haul: Demonetised notes worth over Rs 100 crore seized from Kanpur house
Notes worth around Rs 100 crore were recovered from the house (Picture: ANI)
In one of the biggest note seizures since demonetisation, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and Uttar Pradesh Police on Wednesday seized old Rs 500 and 1000 currency notes worth an estimated Rs 100 crore from a locked house in Kanpur.
The cash was in Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, which were demonetised by the government in November 2016. The currency was neatly stacked to form a bed of currency notes. The exact count, however, is not known as counting is still underway.
The raid was conducted in Kanpur’s Seesamau pocket.
“We received information of the presence of demonetised currency worth crores at a person’s residential premises in Kanpur,” AK Meena, Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) said.
“A raid was conducted by teams of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Income Tax (I-T) department officials. A final amount has not been ascertained as search and counting is underway. We are interrogating the people involved,” he added.
The house where the raid was conducted is reportedly owned by Ashok Khatri, who runs a money exchange business.
Although some arrests have been made, police have refused to divulge the names of the accused. “We are looking if there was any involvement of government officers,” police sources told PTI.
An NIA official, meanwhile, hinted at the involvement of top businessmen. The agency also suspects that the accused were planning to covert the demonetised notes into legal currency through some illicit means.
Incidentally, RBI had earlier estimated that over 99 percent of demonetised notes had been returned to the banks.
An interrogation by the I-T department officials is underway.
#WATCH Police seized demonetized currency worth crores from a residential premises in Kanpur. pic.twitter.com/Hh7sLrWwoG
— ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) January 17, 2018
