Mumbai Police take note of online currency trading

Mumbai: A day after The Asian Age reported on how people were trying to sell Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes after they were denotified on e-commerce websites such as eBay and OLX, the Mumbai police's cyber Cell is looking into the listings. The Cyber crime cell is verifying what kind of currency notes are up for sale and who are the people who have uploaded the same.

The Asian Age had on November 17 reported that online reselling sites especially eBay and OLX were selling old currency notes for exorbitant prices such as Rs 15,000 and Rs 7,999.

Both the sites also had listings for the new Rs 2,000 currency note with one of the listings on eBay selling the same for Rs 2 lakh. eBay had 430 listings for the search term “Rs 500” and the same had gone up to 513 listings on Friday. Both the listings on OLX for the new Rs 2,000 note had been removed.

Joint Commissioner of Police, Deven Bharti, had said that trading in currency notes especially the old ones since they were now denotified was illegal.

“With the old notes being banned and not in use anymore, no one can use it or sell it unless prescribed by the government. And trading in any currency notes — old and new is illegal. We will take action after going through the listing,” he said.

When contacted the Mumbai Police Commissioner D.D. Padsalgikar said that he would ask the Cyber police to look into the same.

The Cyber police’s temporary charge is with DCP (Detection 1) Shashikant Satav who said the police had started verifying the listings. “We will go through all the listings on the said site and after verifying who these were uploaded by, we will take appropriate action,” said Mr Satav.