New Delhi: Delhi police seized nearly Rs 13.5 crore in a raid at a law firm in southeast Delhi’s GK-I area, of which Rs 2.6 crore is in new currency released after demonetisation, a senior police official said on Sunday.
The raid was carried out by Crime Branch at the office of T&T law firm last night, the officer said.
“The recovered amount is close to Rs 13.5 crore. The amount of Rs 2.62 crore was found in newly introduced Rs 2,000 notes. Besides these, Rs 7.7 crore were in the form of Rs 1,000 notes and Rs 3.06 crore were in the form of Rs 100 notes along with Rs 11 lakh in Rs 50 denomination. Two note counting machines were also found there,” said Ravindra Yadav, joint commissioner of police (crime).
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According to I-T department sources, the lawyer had recently declared unaccounted income worth over Rs 125 crore after searches were carried out against him.
The officer said that police had been keeping a watch on the advocate who owned the law firm for a long time.
“A secret information surfaced that a renowned advocate who had declared Rs 125 crore before the I-T department officials a few days ago, was hoarding huge amount of cash illegally and indulging in transaction of the old and new currency notes. A round the clock watch was kept on his activities by the crime branch, especially at the premises in GK-I,” said the officer.
The Inter State Cell (ISC) of Crime Branch received a secret input late last evening that huge amount of currency notes had arrived at the advocate’s office in Greater Kailash.
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“A team led by ACP ISC Sanjay Sehrawat was constituted under the supervision of DCP (Crime) Bhisham Singh and the information was shared with the Income Tax officials. They were also roped in for the operation,” said the officer.
After due procedure and sanction, a search warrant was procured and a raid conducted on the premises following which huge new and old currency notes to the tune of several crores were recovered.
When the police team raided the office, the rooms were locked and a caretaker was present.
“It’s probably one of the several office premises which was mainly used as cash godown guarded by just one guard,” said the officer.
Police said that more cash was likely to be recovered in the follow-up raids.