Bengaluru: Even as the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Monday arrested two private persons – Nazeer Ahmed and Chandrakant Ramalingam of Secure Value India Ltd, which is involved in deposit of new currency notes in the ATMs – in the alleged illegal diversion of new currency notes, the Enforcement Directorate (ED), Bengaluru has arrested the former chief project officer, State Highway Development Project (SHDP), S.C. Jayachandra under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act. Nazeer and Ramalingam were produced in the CBI court, which remanded them to police custody for five days and Jayachandra has been remanded to ED custody by the court till December 9.

The action by central agencies follows last weekend’s raids by the Directorate of Income Tax, Bengaluru and Goa on the premises of since suspended officers – Jayachandra, T. N. Chikkarayappa, managing director, Cauvery Neeravari Nigam Ltd (CNNL), Ramalingam and Sibi Chakravarthy of Kannan Borewells, in which they had reportedly seized unaccounted cash of over `6 crore, of which

Rs 5.7 crore was in new currency notes of Rs 2,000 denomination along with 9 kg of jewellery and 5 kg of bullion worth over `5 crore. The I-T Directorate had estimated the total unaccountable income of the group around `152 crore.

According to unconfirmed sources, the I-T officials had seized a diary in which names of four Cabinet ministers, some IPS and IAS officers were mentioned, who had allegedly deposited their “ill-gotten” money with the accused. The CBI has conducted searches at 10 places and at two places, the searches are on, said an official source.

The CBI has also registered cases against Jayachandra, Suryanarayan Bairi, chief manager, Karnataka Bank, Umashankar Renuka, manager, Dhanalaxmi Bank, Ibrahim Shareef of Secure Value India Limited, unknown public servants and unknown others for criminal conspiracy, cheating, criminal breach of trust and misappropriation of documents and property under Sections 120-B r/w 420, 406, 409, 468, 471 and 477A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Sec. 13(2) r/w 13(1)(c) & (d) of the Prevention of Corruption (PC) Act, 1988 on information that after demonetisation was announced by the central government on November 8, some officials of public sector banks and private sector banks have colluded with some middlemen and agents and have been unauthorisedly diverting several crores of new currency notes to some individuals in violation of the Reserve Bank of India circulars, stated the official release by the CBI.

Secure India Value was handling funds of around 18 banks, including some public sector banks, the CBI stated.