Belagavi: Belagavi police seized Rs 3.11 crore in scrapped currency notes of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 denominations during a raid on a local hotel in Belagavi on Monday night and arrested six people who brought the notes from different parts of Karnataka and Maharashtra.
Based on a tipoff, a team of police officials, headed by B.R. Gaddekar, an inspector from the City Crime Branch, raided Room No. 204 at Rohan Residency, a hotel located at Nehru Nagar and found Rs 3.11 crore in banned currency notes stashed in different bags. Six people staying in the room were arrested. Over 80 per cent of the notes are of Rs 500 denomination, while the rest were in Rs 1,000 notes, the police said.
The arrested are identified as Aravind Talwar from Goa, Suhas A. Patil and Rama Patil from Pune, Saddam Hussain from Miraj, Anil Patil from Belagavi and Abdul Nasir from Bhatkal.
On an assurance given by accused Anil Patil that he could get the old currency notes exchanged with the help of his connections in the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), other five accused from different places brought the currency notes on Monday to Belagavi and were staying at the hotel, waiting for Anil Patil.
During the preliminary interrogation, the accused did not disclose the names of people from whom they got the old notes but said, it belonged to their relatives and family members. However, investigation is on to find out how the five accused managed to collect such a large amount of cash.
