Odisha: Daily Wage Earners Line Up at RBI Office to Exchange Rs 2,000 Notes

Bhubaneswar: A strange spectacle was on Wednesday witnessed here at the local head office of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) where hundreds of people, most of them belonging to the working class groups, queued up to exchange Rs 2,000-rupee notes for small denomination currencies.

The working class people, many of them living in the city slums, said they were paid between Rs 200 and Rs 3,000 by their handlers who gave each of them at least 10 numbers of Rs 2,000-rupee notes for exchange at the RBI counters. They, however, did not disclose who had given them the money for exchange.

“Each of us has been given 10 numbers of Rs 2,000-rupee notes. They are paying us between Rs 200 to and 300 for one transaction. We don’t know whose money this is. But some people come to us and give us money in the morning for exchange and they wait at a distance to get the lower denomination currencies as soon as the transaction is over,” said a woman who stood in the queue.

She justified her act saying, “We are daily wage-earners. We agreed to stand in the queue for exchange of Rs 2,000-rupee notes as the job is comparatively a little easier than the work we do daily to earn our livelihood. We will buy food for our family after getting paid for our work.”

On Tuesday also, nearly 500 persons had stood in queues for the RBI local head office and many of them exchanged money.

As this unusual news spread like wildfire, the Economic Offence Wing (EoW) of Odisha Crime Branch and a team of Enforcement Directorate swung into action.

A two-member team of the EoW reached the spot and interacted with the people standing in the queue. However, none of the persons standing in the queue was forthcoming on the identity of the individual or organisation who engaged them in the act.

“We came here to find out the sources of the money. This is our preliminary investigation. We will brief you in detail about the development once we arrive at some conclusion or find some clues,” said the EoW team.

The EoW investigators said they had taken suo moto notice of the large gathering of people at the RBI office for exchange of high value notes and no one had lodged any complaint with them.

Sarada Prasanna Mohanty, the regional director of RBI, Bhubaneswar, said, “We had no role to play here. Since there is time for exchange of Rs 2,000-rupee notes at RBI state headquarters, we are entertaining the people coming for this service.”

When asked whether it is an attempt to get black money converted into white, the RBI Regional Director said, “The law enforcement agencies can investigate such issues.”