A post with a couple of photos is being shared on Facebook with a claim that a BJP MLA’s car was caught with Rs. 20,000 crores. Let’s try to analyze the claim made in the post.
Claim: BJP MLA Sudhir Gadgil’s car was caught with Rs. 20,000 crore of new currency.
Fact: One picture shows a raid where an amount of Rs. 6 crore worth of old notes were caught in Osmanabad. The money caught belongs to Sangli Urban bank owned by Ganesh Gadgil, brother of BJP MLA Sudhir Gadgil. The other picture is taken from the IT raids on Sanjay Gupta, an NSE broker, where Rs. 11 crores were caught. Hence the claim of catching Rs. 20,000 crores new currency is FALSE.
When the image of officials with the vehicle is cropped and run through Google Reverse Image Search, an ABP Maharashtra article with the same image can be found in the search results. According to that article, an amount of Rs. 6 crore worth of old notes were caught in November 2016. Further investigation revealed that the car belongs to Sangli Urban bank owned by Ganesh Gadgil, brother of BJP MLA Sudhir Gadgil. But the police officials claim that the money was being transferred to be used in legislative council elections. Even though if it is believed that money belongs to Sudhir Gadgil, the amount caught was Rs. 6 crores, not Rs. 20,000 crores.
When the second image, with boxes of money, is run through Google Reverse Image Search, a similar image was found in a Times of India article, published in November 2017. According to that article, the image was taken when IT officials raided Sanjay Gupta, an NSE broker, related to the OPG Group in the co-location case. So, this picture is not related to BJP MLA Sudhir Gadgil and also, the amount caught was just Rs. 11 crores.
To sum it up, Rs. 20,000 crores worth of new currency was not caught in BJP MLA Sudhir Gadgil’s car.
