Hawala racket busted in Chennai, Rs 1.34 crore in new Rs 2000 notes seized

Chennai: Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) officials busted a hawala gang and seized Rs 1.34 crore in new Rs 2000 notes at Chennai airport on Thursday.

During the raid, the DRI officials held five persons and seized the huge amount of money. Besides, recovering Rs 1.34 crore, the sleuths also seized USD 7000 from the hawala operators.

Acting on specific input that a gang was involved in smuggling of foreign exchange out of India, the DRI Chennai zone officials intercepted five persons outside the Anna International airport here in the wee hours of Thursday, an official release said.

Massive raids are being carried out across the country by the various government agencies in the wake of the burgeoning fake currency racket post demonetisation.

Consequent to the announcement of withdrawal of Legal Tender status of banknotes of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 denominations from the midnight of November 8, 2016, the Reserve Bank of India made arrangements for supply of adequate quantity of banknotes in various denominations to the public through the banks.

Over the period from November 10, 2016 upto December 19, 2016, banks have reported that banknotes worth Rs 5,92,613 crore have been issued to public either over the counter or through ATMs.

In this period, the Reserve Bank has issued to the banks and their branches, for distribution to the public, a total of 22.6 billion pieces of notes of various denominations of which 20.4 billion pieces belonged to small denominations of Rs 10, 20, 50 and 100s and 2.2 billion belonged to higher denominations of Rs 2000 and Rs 500.