Two held trying to exchange fake currency

Two youth were arrested from a bank on Ganesh Chandra Avenue when they attempted to deposit counterfeit notes of Rs 1,000 on Wednesday.

Police said that Santosh Singh and Loknath Singh had entered the bank after standing in a queue for around three and a half hours to deposit the money. They were carrying 24 notes of Rs 1,000 valuation.

They had followed all formalities one need to go through to deposit money after the Centre announced demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. They had filled in the required form properly and one of them had also shown his voter card as identity proof required to deposit the money.

The situation turned against them when the official of the bank, who was collecting the money, found that all the notes were counterfeit. Initially, the youth claimed of being unaware that the notes were counterfeit. But they failed to give a satisfactory answer when the police asked them to name the person who had given them the notes. They were thus subsequently arrested.

A police officer said that the duo had thought that the bank employees were working under tremendous pressure and thus it would be not a difficult task to deposit the counterfeit currency.

Policemen from Bowbazar police station interrogated them to know whether they have connection with any counterfeit currency racket.

Meanwhile, two youth – Sourav Mukherjee and Sushil Sharma - were arrested when they were carrying Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes worth Rs 80 lakh in two bags. They were caught near Burabazar.

Police came to know that they were coming from Golabari in Howrah and they were destined to go to a place in Burabazar itself. They were arrested as they had failed to give any satisfactory answer for carrying such a huge numbers of invalid notes.

Police, however, came to know that the money belongs to one Kishen Bajaj.