The custodian of a cash management company has been booked for cheating after a call centre employee alleged that an SBI ATM in Sangam Vihar here dispensed four fake notes with face value of ₹2,000 and “Children Bank Of India” printed on them.
The incident happened on February 6.
The complainant, Rohit, approached the police as soon as he realised that the notes were fake.
“A Sub-Inspector reached the spot to withdraw cash from the ATM. He, too, got a fake ₹2,000 note,” said DCP (South-East) Romil Baaniya.
Note features
The police said that except the colour, the counterfeit notes bore very few similarities to a real note. For instance, Bharatiya Reserve Bank had been replaced by “Bharatiya Manoranjan Bank” on the notes, and “Children Bank” had become the guarantor instead of the Central government.
The RBI seal was missing from the notes as were the leaf markings.
The police later arrested Mohd. Isha, who was the custodian of the cash management company, Brinks India Pvt. Ltd., at the time of the incident.
“Further investigation is on,” said Mr. Baaniya.
Initially, a case of cheating and that of using forged or counterfeit currency notes or bank notes as genuine was registered.
Later, it was found that the notes could be purchased at any toy shop.
Subsequently, the charges of using fake currency notes were dropped and provisions related to criminal breach of trust were added.
Bank issues statement
A statement issued by the State Bank of India said it had in place a very robust system for monitoring quality of notes. All notes received and to be dispensed by the bank, either through ATMs or branches, are processed through state-of-the-art ‘note sorting machines’, the bank added.
“These machines are equipped with templates of all legal tender. Any note not conforming to the security features is separated as ‘suspect’ for further manual scrutiny. Thus, no fake note is likely to be dispensed through SBI ATMs,” the statement said.
Published - February 23, 2017 07:17 am IST
