Lucknow:-The Special Investigation Team (SIT) reached Domariyaganj in Uttar Pradesh Friday to probe the fake currency racket that was unearthed earlier this month in the State Bank of India (SBI) branch.

The state government Thursday handed over the investigation in the case to the SIT.

A Reserve Bank of India (RBI) team, which raided the branch Monday, has so far recovered fake notes with a denominational value of Rs.7 million and the scanning was still in progress, officials said.

It is suspected that the recovery may further rise to Rs.20 million after the sorting process is over.

A cashier of the bank, Sudhakar Tripathi, has admitted to exchanging fake currency notes with the original ones.

"As SIT specialises in such cases, we decided to hand over the investigation to it," Principal Secretary (Home) Mahesh Gupta told reporters Thursday at a press briefing in Lucknow.

"We will be carrying out an initial investigation for a couple of days and will coordinate with the Special Task Force (STF). A bigger team will reach Domariyaganj by Monday and will camp there", a member of the SIT team told IANS.

Meanwhile, the State Bank of India has also put all its 1,350 branches on alert and asked them to be extra cautious against passing fake currency notes.

SBI Chief General Manager, Uttar Pradesh, Shiv Kumar has termed the incident as shocking and said efforts are being made to restore the confidence of its customers.

 

 

Source : IANS