Bengaluru: The Sanjaynagar police have arrested eight people, including an advocate, while they were trying to sell a particular denomination of the Turkish currency, which has been banned in that country.
The arrested are Eugene Prabhu, a practicing lawyer at the City Civil and Sessions and High Court, Mohan Kumar, Anthony Raju, Shiva Yogi, Shivashankar, Zameer Ahmed, all of them residents of the city except for Shivaiah and Balamanadiletti who hail from Andhra Pradesh.
The arrests took place on Thursday and the police have recovered 98 Turkish currencies (each with a denomination of 5,00,000 Turkish Lira) worth more than Rs 105 crore, from them.
According to the police, the men were trying to cheat customers by selling these currencies at “lower” rates, which is yet to be investigated. “The denomination of each currency is 5,00,000 Turkish Lira. One Turkish Lira is equivalent to Rs 21.56. Hence each denomination of the Turkish currency is worth around Rs 1.07crore,” said a senior police officer.
On Thursday, Sanjaynagar police received information that some people were trying to sell banned foreign currencies. The police also got to know that the gang was in Jaladarshini Layout near a park in Sanjayanagar, trying to locate a customer’s addresses.
The cops rounded them and they found the foreign currencies. After inquiries, they were brought to the police station for further investigations, said an investigating officer.
The police subsequently came to know that this particular denomination of Turkish currency was banned in Turkey in December, 2004. One of the accused, Balamandiletti, confessed that the currencies were given to them by a person in Andhra Pradesh. Sanjaynagar police have registered a case.
