nagpur crime branch squad cracked down on a gang duping citizens by promising to exchange demonetized currency notes and nabbed five persons including a businessman on saturday the police raided an apartment in rajate colony and recovered rs98 lakh in demonetized notes a mauser pistol and two live cartridgesa balaghatbased person too is among the ones nabbed during the operation police said the gang after failing to exchange the scrapped currency notes had been planning to commit a dacoity at a petrol pumpthe five persons arrested have been identified as santosh kadam rajesh chandak deep marshal radhelal lilhare and santosh kaikarwar kadam a native of yavatmal is considered to be the mastermind of the gang who had fled from his native place after incurring substantial losses in the business of hiring out lawns he had also a debt of around rs1 crore against him the firearm and cartridges were recovered from himcrime branch after rounding up the suspects also informed balaghat police of madhya pradesh after lilhares face seemed to have matched with a suspect but nothing was found during the interrogationpolice said none of the five had any serious crime records the gang was busted following a tipoff from an informer of head constable afsar khan the raid was conducted by a squad under pi sandeep bhosale apis gorakh kumbhar prashant choughule and sanjay chauhan psi shriniwas mishraapart from khan constable ramesh umate naresh sahare amit patre and others too participated in the raid conducted at the apartment where kadam had hired a room for the last few months its learnt kadam had introduced himself to the landlord as a representative of a finance company police said kadam had been luring businessmen and traders promising them to get their old notes exchanged in the process kadam had accumulated demonetized currency notes 10000 pieces of rs500 and around 4800 pieces of rs 1000the police have also informed the reserve bank of india and income tax department about the seizurean offence was registered at bajaj nagar police station against the five police said the gang has been now remanded to custody till february 28