UP: Rs 100 crore in junk notes leave cops puzzled

KANPUR: More than 48 hours after recovering over Rs 97 crore in demonetised currency notes and arresting 16 people, investigating agencies are still clueless as to how the accused planned to exchange the old notes with new ones. They have now pinned their hopes on ‘Hari Krishna’ of Bengaluru, who according to the arrested persons, promised to exchange the demonetised currency at 40% of their face value.

Superintendent of police (East) Anurag Arya told TOI on Thursday that police, after collecting concrete evidence against the accused, would move court to seek their custody. The accused are in judicial custody till January 30.

Arya said the case was “mysterious” for several reasons as none of the 16 accused have revealed the name of the person to whom they were supposed to finally deliver the demonetised notes. A few among them also said the money was to be exchanged through one more “big firm”, but they have not named it yet. Police said a botany professor, Santosh Yadav, of Kanpur used to collect money from Kanpur and Lucknow and also act as a money changer.


“Sanjeev Agarwal and Maneesh Agarwal, real estate businessmen, hailing from West Bengal, used to work as a commission agent. Similarly, Koteshwar Rao of Hyderabad also used to work as an agent for Hari Krishna from Bengaluru. Going by their primary confession... our investigation will now focus on him,” a senior official told TOI.

The investigators further revealed that they operated their network from five states —UP, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, West Bengal and Karnataka. “The agents took Kanpur-Varanasi-Kolkata-Hyderabad, Kanpur-Varanasi-Hyderabad, Kanpur-West UPDelhi routes to bring the old currency. They claimed to have exchanged around Rs 15 crore of demonetised currency to Anand Khatri,” said an official privy to the investigation.