Freshly printed currency notes go missing again from RBI press

The ghost of missing currency notes has come to haunt the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) Note Printing Press in Mysore near here.

In a fresh case, thirty three notes of Rs 1000 denomination belonging to a consignment sent from RBI Note Printing Press to the Jammu and Kashmir branch of the RBI have been reported missing.

The missing of freshly-printed currency notes worth Rs 33,000 comes less than two years after a similar case involving the theft of notes worth Rs 5 million was reported from the same RBI Note Printing Press.

President of RBI Note Printing Press Employees Union and former MLA A Ramdas told reporters that the bundle containing the 33 currency notes of Rs 1,000 denonimation had been dispatched to Jammu and Kashmir in November 2005. “When it was opened in March this year by the General Manager of the Jammu and Kashmir branch of RBI, he found 28 notes in the fifth series and five notes in the second series missing. The Jammu and Kashmir RBI branch sent a letter to the Note Printing Press in Mysore last month seeking an inquiry into the incident”, he said.

But, the General Manager of RBI Note Printing Press in Mysore S C Agarwal told reporters that he was not aware of any fresh case of missing of notes and questioned the authenticity of claims made by Ramdas.

But, Ramdas stood firm on his allegation and said the authorities of the Note Printing Press had not bothered to file complaint on the missing of notes to the police. As the President of the RBI Note Printing Press Employees Union, Ramdas said he would shortly write a letter to the Federal Minister for Finance P Chidambaram seeking an investigation into the affairs of the RBI Note Printing Press.

It may be recalled that currency notes worth Rs five million went missing form a consignment sent from the RBI Note Printing Press to Kerala less than two years ago and a CBI inquiry led to the arrest of a couple of employees for the theft.