Coins recovered from melting unit, 5 held

Varanasi, July 3 (UNI) Police in this holy city unearthed a coin-melting unit and arrested five labourers in Rohania area here late last night.

Five labourers Musafir Bind, Ram Avadh, Guddu Chauhan, Subhash Maurya and Kalicharan were arrested from a house at Naraur village, where the coin-melting unit was being operated by Santosh Jaiswal alias Munna, who is absconding.

A haul, including 37 quintals of alloy and iron coins, besides 19 quintals of coins melted into bricks, estimated at Rs 60 lakh was recovered from the spot, Additional Police Superintendent Dipak Kumar told UNI.

''For the last many days, a police team was working on solving the mystery of one and two rupee coins disappearing from market.

Acting on a specific tip off, a raid was conducted at the unit where confectionary items were manufactured earlier.'' About the modus operandi of coin-melters, Mr Kumar said the alloy coins and silver was first melted in ovens, then brick were prepared by mixing 60 per cent of the melted coins and 40 per cent silver.

The bricks disguised as silver bricks were subsequently supplied to units making silver jewellery and other items across Eastern Uttar Pradesh.

Efforts are on to arrest Santosh, who was running the unit for the last seven months. There had been an acute shortage of one and two rupee coins in market.

The acute shortage of coins is best accentuated by shops introducing token money to deal with lack of metallic currency and the registered money-changers raking in moolah by charging a margin of 10-20 per cent for changing paper currency into metallic coins.

Not ruling out more such units in the region, Mr Kumar said busting of this case and interrogation of those arrested will help the police in getting to the core of the illicit business directly affecting market transactions.

UNI