Kathmandu, September 3

Police have arrested two persons with banned Indian currency notes with face value of INR 6.82 million.

Acting on a tip-off that Krishna Kumari Sharma, 41, of Banke and Arjun Bhandari, 29, of Gorkha were bargaining with someone for exchange of demonetised Indian banknotes with new ones or Nepali rupees, police nabbed them from Annapurna Chowk, Swoyambhu, yesterday.

SSP Rabindra Bahadur Dhanuk, in-charge at Metropolitan Police Range, Kathmandu, said the duo were found carrying the defunct banknotes with the motive of cheating gullible persons. “They failed to give satisfactory clarification of the source of the banned banknotes. Further investigation has been launched to crack their nexus as we suspect more people are involved in the racket,” he informed.

DSP Kishor Kumar Shrestha, in-charge at MPC, Swoyambhu, said Krishna Kumari ran a tea shop at Gongabu and Arjun is a college student. “They ganged up to collect banned notes from somebody else to exchange them for commission,” he added.

Police are preparing to hand them over to the Department of Revenue Investigation for legal action. “We are also coordinating with Nepal Rastra Bank in this regard,” SSP Dhanuk said. The Central Investigation Bureau and other units of Nepal Police have seized banned Indian notes with face value of over INR 35 million from separate places of Kathmandu since the Indian government demonetised INR 1,000 and 500 notes on November 8.

The arrestees in most cases told police that they smuggled the banknotes to Nepal from India with the motive of earning profit by exchanging them for Nepali rupees through various criminal networks.