Bengaluru: Home Minister Ramalinga Reddy on Friday said assistant sub-inspector of police, Hombale Gowda, and two constables, Narasimha Murthy and Gangadhar, were suspended for their alleged involvement in some missing cash from the strongroom of the Central Crime Branch (CCB).
The minister had asked the Police Commissioner to probe if senior officials were involved.
The charade fell apart when a BMTC conductor, who had fallen into hard times, revealed a note-conversion racket he was part of.
According to the FIR filed by the High Grounds police earlier this week, the conductor approached a real-estate agent, Satyanarayana, for money.
He was then directed to a scheme, where he would get a handsome commission for exchanging Rs. 1 crore worth of demonetized currency from two people from BTM Layout.
On November 25, he collected the money, and met up with another agent, Venkatesh, to exchange them into new notes. As they were driving towards Madhavnagar, around 8 p.m., three people claiming to be policemen from the Seshadripuram station stopped them and took away the old notes, claiming it to be part of the ongoing raids.
The conductor landed at the police station and found out that the three men did not work there. He then filed a complaint with the police, who started investigating. They soon found that the thieves were actually policemen attached to the CCB.
The constables then reportedly confessed they had done this to “replace” the cash missing from the CCB strongroom, said the police.
The home minister said around Rs 1.5 crore, out of nearly Rs. 15 crore from previous raids which was in the strong room, was missing.
