Even after four years of demonetisation, scrapped currency are found in possession of some people in Gujarat.
In the latest incident, demonetised notes with a face value of ₹4.76 crore have been recovered in Godhra town and two persons arrested.
This followed a raid by the Special Operations Group (SOG) of the the police on Tuesday night, a statement issued by the Anti- Terrorist Squad (ATS) said.
The ATS had given a tip-off about the persons in possession of the currency to the local police, who conducted the raid and nabbed Zuber Hayat and Farookh Chhota. But the key accused, Idrish Hayat, managed to escape, police said .
A police statement said, “Based on a tip-off that some persons were involved in illegal transactions of scrapped notes, the Godhra SOG first raided a place near the Med Circle and recovered five bundles of such notes of ₹1,000 denomination from Chhota”.
After his interrogation, the SOG team reached the Dhantya Plot area and found several bundles of old currency hidden in a car and a house owned by Idrish Hayat and his son, Zuber. While Idrish managed to flee, Zuber nabbed.
The police collectively recovered 9,312 notes of ₹1,000 and 76,739 notes of ₹500 denomination, with the total face value of ₹4,76,81,500.
In August 2018, three persons were arrested and demonetised notes with a face value of ₹3.36 crore seized from them in Surat’s Khatodara locality.
In August 2019, the police arrested a man in Surat for possessing demonetised currency worth ₹1 crore from a bus coming from Mumbai.
The old currency in the denomination of ₹500 and ₹1,000 were discontinued following demonetisation announced by the Modi government on November 8, 2016.
While the new note of ₹500 was introduced, the ₹1,000 note was discontinued and instead ₹2,000 note was introduced.
