Jabalpur (Madhya Pradesh): The kotwali police in collaboration with income department seized around Rs 42,54,300 hawala money from two traders ahead of urban body elections in Jabalpur district on Thursday.
The police also seized two currency counting machines from the spot.
It is suspected that the money was planned to be spent in the urban body elections. According to the police, they had a tip off about the matter. The police team conducted a raid in the office located at Agarwal Market in the city.
The team found Amit Kshetriya (40) was counting the money and
took the three traders, Karan, Rahul Kumar and one other into custody. The police brought them to Kotwali police station of the district and started interrogation of the accused.
The team found Amit Kshatriya (40), resident of Anand Colony, Baldevbagh, was counting money with the machine and Shubham Patel (26), resident of Shahi Naka Garha was spotted writing code words on the note with a pencil. The police took them into custody and interrogated them.
During interrogation of the accused, another name of Vipin Patel came to fore who was also involved in the matter.
The police recovered cash money, currency counting machines, cheque book, pass book and a book diary in which number of currency and code words of hawala money were written, from the spot.
The case was handed over to the income tax department for further investigation and the police started a search operation to nab Vipin.
Nonetheless, it is said that the hawala business has been running in Jabalpur for a long time. From time to time, police use to catch the hawala traders and recovered lakhs of rupees from them.
