The Uttar Pradesh Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) and the Income-Tax department conducted a joint operation and detained three persons in a car with Rs. 18 lakh new currency notes from Noida Sector 57 on Saturday night. They were released later after being asked to reveal their source of money by Monday. The car was seized.
The three have been identified as Mahendra Kumar and Praveen Kumar, natives of Hisar, and Vinay Kumar from Jind in Haryana.
Anoop Singh, Deputy Superintendent of Police, ATS (Western U.P.) told The Hindu that police received information that some people were carrying a huge amount of counterfeit currency in Bhishanpura village in Sector 57. “We sent a team of police personnel and also alerted the Income-Tax department officials. In the joint operation, the car in which the three were travelling was intercepted and the cash was seized,” Mr. Singh said.
The new notes were in the denomination of Rs. 2,000. “There was no counterfeit currency with them. The police also found some notes of Rs. 1,000 which are now not valid tender,” Mr. Singh added. The police said, the three initially told them that they had come to make payment for a car. Later they said the money belonged to some other person and they had come to deliver it in Noida.
Primary inquiry show the three are into a construction business in Haryana. They were looking for a client to deliver the new notes and collect old ones on commission basis. Police are trying to nab others involved.
Fake account
On Saturday, the police sought transaction details of two accounts and CCTV footage from Axis Bank here in connection with a raid carried out at the bank branch by the I-T Department, unearthing Rs. 60 crore from the accounts of 20 shell companies.
The police have sought the details after an FIR was lodged on the complaint of a Delhi resident, Nandu Paswan, who alleged that someone had opened a current account in the name of a company in which he was named as a proprietor and a saving account in his name. Earlier, the I-T Department had detected fake accounts and interrogated him.
(With PTI inputs)
