The High Court of Karnataka on Monday ordered issue of notice to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on a plea that has pointed out difficulty in exchanging demonetised notes of ₹500 denomination which were seized by the police without recording the serial numbers of the seized currencies in connection with a crime.
Justice A.S. Bopanna passed the order on a petition filed by Central Arecanut and Cocoa Marketing and Processing Cooperative Ltd. (CAMPCO), Mangaluru. It has been stated in the petition that some cash was stolen from its Shivamogga branch during April 2015 and a few days later the police arrested three persons, all employees of the petitioner-society, and seized the stolen cash, of which around 500 currencies were of ₹500 denomination.
As both the magistrate and the sessions court had refused to release the cash seized from the accused, the society had approached the High Court, which in March 2017 ordered release of cash. After release of notes, the society approached the RBI for exchange of these old notes as they were demonetised by then and the deadline to deposit them in the banks had ended.
However, the RBI, in July this year, intimated to CAMPCO that as per the notification issued by the Union government in May 2017 the demonetised notes confiscated or seized by the law enforcement agencies or produced before a court on or before December 30, 2016 could be deposited or exchanged only on production of court orders, which contain serial numbers of such notes and if the law enforcement agencies have noted the serial number of the seized notes.
As neither the police had recorded the serial numbers of the seized notes in their mahazar report nor the trial court had recorded the serial number in its order of releasing the seized notes, the petitioner-society has explained in the petition that it would not be able to comply with the conditions imposed for exchange of seized notes.
The petitioner-society has sought a direction to the RBI to exchange the demonetised currencies without insisting on document for the serial numbers of the seized notes released by the court.
