It’s raining Rs 2,000 and Rs 500 notes on Kolkata street

KOLKATA: As if straight from the silver screen, currency notes rained from a high-rise and those standing below rushed to collect as many as they could on Wednesday evening. The only difference: the notes did not spill out of a suitcase; they were thrown off an office. It is presumed that a DRI raid was on in the building when wads of notes rained on to the ground.
“It was around 3pm when I heard about the incident.I couldn’t believe my ears. My office is in the vicinity and I rushed to see what had happened. As I reached the building, I was dumbfounded to see currency notes of Rs 2,000 and Rs 500 floating in the air,” recounted Ajmal Khan, a Bentinck Street local. The building, barely a few hundred metres from the Income Tax office, was constructed after Orient cinema hall was shut down. It now houses several commercial offices.

According to those present at the spot, while some could catch currency notes floating in the wind, others started capturing videos. “Someone was throwing off notes from a window on the sixth floor. While the wads fell inside the compound, there was a mad rush for notes that came floating outside. Nobody entered the premises,” a witness said. Police sources confirmed that currency notes of around Rs 3.74 lakh were recovered from the nearby area.

According to police sources, DRI officials had reached the M K Point Building at around 2.30pm. Little after the team reached the building, a glass window on the sixth floor was opened and someone started throwing off bundles of cash. It took some time for the passersby to figure out what exactly was happening. Within a minute, people started gathering in front of the building.
Jitendar Singh Sethi, who runs a shoe company and owns a showroom in the area, was surprised to find crowd on the road. “When I came out, it was a chaos. People were shouting ‘noton ki baarish ho rahi hai’. However, I could not see any currency notes. This chaos continued for some time and I shut the shop,” he recounted.
While DRI officers did not want to comment on the issue, sources said that the central agency conducted a raid and asked for reinforcement in the evening. “We are not sure whether the currency notes thrown off the window were genuine or fake. Nothing more can be said at this stage,” said a DRI official.