Five held with demonetised currency of Rs 41.49 lakh

Ahmedabad, Feb 10: In two separate incidents, five persons were detained on Friday with demonetised currency of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 having cumulative face value of Rs 41.49 lakhs, police said.

In the first incident, Sardarnagar police nabbed three persons near Galaxy underpass when they were heading to Naroda area in their car early this morning to exchange scrapped currency notes of Rs 36.99 lakhs.

"When we searched their car out of suspicion, we found old currency notes of Rs 36,99,500, including 2285 notes of Rs 500 and 2,557 notes of Rs 1000 denomination. The trio confessed that the notes belong to one Baldevji Thakor, a property dealer of Mehsana," said Sardarnagar police inspector H B Zala.

Those who were detained for the possession of scrapped notes include Arjun Bhola, Prakash Parmar and Nirmal Adalaja, all residents of Gandhinagar. "As Thakor wanted to exchange these old notes with new ones, he gave this cash to the trio and asked them meet a person called Pintu in Naroda.

Before they could exchange these notes, we nabbed them," said Zala, adding that the detained men were let off after filing a "Janva Jog (For Information Only)" complaint. As the detainees have failed to provide any valid document for the cash, we have seized the cash and informed the Income Tax Department to conduct further probe, police said.

In another incident, Chandkheda police detained two persons with scrapped currency notes of Rs 4.5 lakhs when they were passing from Jagatpur railway crossing this morning on their bike, said Chandkheda police inspector V R Vaniya.

"We have detained two youths with 450 notes of Rs 1000 when they they were passing from the railway crossing. They confessed to have come here from Anand to exchange these old notes. We have seized the cash and informed the I-T department to conduct further probe," said Vaniya.

PTI