When the police found shredded currency notes worth more than Rs. 4
crore at a plywood factory in Bellary on Tuesday, they connected their
discovery with illegal mining, for which the town has earned countrywide
attention.
And they cannot be blamed for this. In the final report on illegal mining, then Karnataka lokayukta Justice Santosh Hegde
referred to the incident of R4 crore (another lot) being burnt in
Bellary a year ago and related it to the alleged illegal mining
activities of the Reddy brothers, former ministers in the Karnataka
government.
But this time the notes were supposedly brought from the Reserve Bank
of India’s (RBI’s) Indore unit for Krishna Industries to make plywood.
However, the police have passed on this piece of information to the
CBI, which is probing illegal mining, and the RBI for investigation.
The police questioned Krishna Industries’ owner, Sreenivasa, who said
the notes were in no way connected with the Reddy brothers, but were
brought from Indore through an auction.
Bellary superintendent of police Dr Chandragupta told HT the RBI’s
normal practice was to shred old notes or those with some wrong prints
and dump them in its yards. Such notes were used for paper making, which
Sreenivasa did, he added.
“However, a team has been to Indore to verify the facts given by him.
We have been in touch with the RBI and they have the same opinion of
the factory owner.” One of the Reddy brothers, former tourism minister
Janardhana Reddy, is now in jail in Bangalore and had been denied bail
by the designated CBI court. Apart from the note-burning case, large
sums of money had once been thrown into a canal when the CBI launched
raids in Bellary a few months before the arrest of Reddy last year.
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