Thomas (Special correspondent)
Alert residents helped the Puttenahalli police to bust an inter-state money laundering racket operating in the city Tuesday .
The police arrested Mohammed Sahil and his associates Faisal,Fazal and Abdul Manas from Kerala and recovered a huge amount of unaccounted cash and hundreds of deposit slips from various banks from their houses.
Senior officer told media persons,The racket came to light when Venkatesh TS, a city based businessman noticed a man aged around 32 was moving suspiciously inside the SBI ATM in Jaraganahalli trying to deposit cash on Tuesday .
A close watch revealed that he was carrying around Rs.1 lakh cash and a machete in his backpack.
Sensing danger,Venkatesh alerted a few neighbours who tried to catch the accused later identified as Mohammed Sahil,but he tried to attack them with the lethal weapon.
However with the help of others Sahil was pinned down and later handed over to the police.
Inquiries revealed that Sahil and his associates were indulged in cash depositing into random accounts along with the other accused for a commission of Rs.60000 per month.
The Puttenahalli police searched their premises and recovered Rs.20,15,700 along with a cash counting machine.
The police team also recovered hundreds of deposit slips showing accounts into multiple accounts of 25 different banks over the last three months.
On Thursday the team arrested Abdul Manas, fourth accomplice of the three arrested accused.
The four accused revealed that they were operating on the directions of another accused who is now identified and absconding.
The racket was to convert unaccounted cash into white money by depositing it into various bank accounts as part of a laundering exercise.
We have obtained some bank statements in this case of accounts into which the accused had deposited cash.
A total of Rs. 31.5 Crores of money seems to have been deposited in the 185 out of 2,656 accounts for which we have received statements from the banks already.
Further investigation is in progress and co-operation has been sought from other agencies who specialize in money laundering,he added.
Finally Bengaluru Police Commissioner,Kamal Pant has appreciated Addl CP West,Soumendhu Mukherjee,DCP South,Harish Pandey,ACP,TM Shivakumar,PI,Kishore and his team who has done a exemplary and meticulous investigation in busting the racket swiftly after receiving information a special reward will be given to the team he added.
