Enforcement agencies seized Rs. 9 crore in cash — over Rs. 2.5 crore in new notes — from businessmen and touts in various parts of the country on Tuesday and Wednesday.
In a joint operation, the Delhi Police and the Income Tax Department on Wednesday seized Rs. 3.25 crore in demonetised currency from five persons staying at a Karol Bagh hotel.
Officials said the accused worked for two Mumbai-based hawala dealers and had transported huge amounts in new notes at least four times after exchanging old currency through their contacts in Mumbai.
Deft operation
The accused had placed spiral telephone and Internet connecting cables over the neatly packed wads of notes to evade detection by X-ray machines at railway stations and airports. When security personnel confronted them about the suspect luggage, they would claim that they were transporting some electronic equipment.
A hunt has been launched for the masterminds who had hired each courier for Rs. 2,000 a day. The cash was handed over to the Income Tax Department.
In another case, the Enforcement Directorate on Wednesday seized about Rs. 2.2 crore from the premises of a cloth merchant, Inderpal Mahajan, in Chandigarh.
Of the total amount, Rs. 1.5 crore was in demonetised notes and over Rs. 69 lakh in new and older legal notes.
While the local police have registered a case, the law enforcement agency has arrested the accused under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.
CBI probe
On Tuesday evening, Income-Tax officials seized Rs. 2.89 crore from a north Bengaluru flat occupied by an elderly woman. The money is said to belong to one Manjunath, a businessman. The woman initially did not cooperate with the search team and refused to rein in her two dogs.
Around Rs. 2.25 crore of the total money was in new Rs. 2,000 notes. The CBI has also launched an investigation.
In Goa, the department seized Rs. 67.98 lakh in new Rs. 2,000 notes from various persons. The Karnataka and Goa wing of the Income-Tax Department has so far seized about Rs. 30 crore, including Rs. 20.22 crore in new notes, 41.6 kg of bullion and 14 kg of jewellery.
The units have detected unaccounted-for income of about Rs. 1,000 crore in 36 operations.
Two more cases of cash seizures, involving over Rs. 35 lakh, were reported in Faridabad in Haryana.
The Central Industrial Security Force, which guards major airports, has so far seized more than Rs. 70 crore in cash in both demonetised and new notes and over 245 kg of gold.
Close on the heels of a seizure of Rs. 1.04 crore in new denomination notes in Thane, the Pune police recovered Rs. 67 lakh from a car in the city’s Wakad area on Tuesday midnight.
As much as Rs. 62 lakh of the sum was in Rs. 2,000 denomination notes while the rest was in Rs. 100 notes.
The incident occurred along the Pune-Mumbai expressway on Tuesday midnight, when the Wakad police stopped a car coming from Mumbai for checking. On interrogation, the four persons in the car gave evasive replies.
A search resulted in the discovery of bundles of stashed notes. Pravin Jain, Chetan Rajput, Sainath Netke and Amit Doshi, were taken into custody.
(With Bengaluru Bureau and Shoumojit Banerjee)
