In May, the Chennai city police, during a midnight operation, raided the house of a businessman in Kodambakkam and seized bundles of currency notes valued at ₹45 crore concealed in the house. Police personnel found them to be demonetised currency.
Since then, the currency notes have been lying idle in trunk boxes at the Kodambakkam police station. No Central agency has come forward either to prosecute or proceed against the businessman.
Assistant Commissioner of Police A.P. Selvan told The Hindu , “Following a tip-off, as per section 102 of the Criminal Procedure Code, we conducted the search and seized the currency notes from the house of Dhandapani. We also handed over the notes to the jurisdictional court in Saidapet. Following the order of the court for safe custody, we kept them in our station besides addressing a letter to the Central authorities — the Income Tax Department and the Reserve Bank of India.”
No proceedings against accused
A huge amount of demonetised currencies were seized in Shenoy Nagar, Anna Nagar and Koyambedu as well. But none of the Central agencies or law-enforcing authorities in the State have proceeded against the accused so far, in spite of the enactment of a special law to prevent hoarding of demonetised currency. Post the exchange window period, the Union government had brought in the Specified Bank Notes (Cessation of Liabilities) Act, 2017, which specifies holding of more than 10 scrapped notes as punishable with a minimum fine of ₹10,000 or five times the cash held, whichever is higher.
M. Sheela, Special Public Prosecutor for Income Tax, said, “Since the constitutional validity of demonetisation itself is pending before a five-judge Constitution Bench and the various petitions filed by persons who have sought window to deposit their old notes has also been tagged along, the Attorney General in the previous hearing deposed before the apex court that no criminal action would be taken against these people until the validity is decided.”
The police have been discretionary in the arrests made for such seizures of old currency notes. The police have no power to investigate such offences and the Income Tax Department has the authority to take action against people who are unable to justify these holdings of cash or explain their source. Section 132 of the Income Tax Act empowers the Central Board of Direct Taxes to authorise certain ranks of officers from the Indian Revenue Service to conduct searches for violations under the Income Tax Act, sources said.
