Three people, including bank officials arrested for illegal exchange of scrapped currency notes

Police said on Monday that three people, including two bank officials, were arrested in Latur district, Maharashtra for being involved in illegal exchange of banned high value currency notes worth Rs 11 lakh with new ones.

This is the third such incident in Latur where some people, in connivance with authorities, allegedly tried to exchange old notes with the new ones, they said.

"The branch manager and a cashier of a public sector bank along with a trader were arrested on Saturday. The bank officials were carrying new currency notes, while the trader was in possession of Rs 11 lakh in form of scrapped notes of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 denominations," Latur Superintendent of Police Shivaji Rathod told PTI.

Working on a tip-off, the bank officials and the trader were arrested on Saturday when they were exchanging the notes on the footpath outside the divisional office of State Transport Corporation, he said.

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Rs 11 lakh in new notes of Rs 2,000 denomination were seized from the bank officials, who had allegedly sought 20 per cent commission for exchanging the old notes, police claimed.

Those arrested have been identified as, bank branch manager Himanshu Rajbahadur Singh, cashier Shishupal Rajpalsingh Arya and local trader Manoj Bhanudas Ghar. 

They were later produced in a court which remanded them in police custody for three days, police officials said.

The accused have been booked under IPC sections 188 (disobedience to duty), 379 (theft) and 411 (dishonestly receiving stolen property), police added.

Earlier, officials of another public sector bank, having a branch at Udgir in Latur district, were arrested for allegedly exchanging Rs 18 lakh illegally.

Later, a cashier working in MSRTC's Udgir office also exchanged old notes with the new ones without following proper procedure, police said.