₹500 notes lay on Delhi street, no one touches due to coronavirus fear

About a dozen people watched from a safe distance as three ₹500 notes lay right outside a house. For several minutes, no one dared to touch the currencies. Then someone dialled the police.

The fear among many people that currency notes could be carriers of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) resulted in a peculiar situation in North Delhi’s Lawrence Road on Wednesday afternoon.

It all began around 1.15pm when someone noticed three soiled notes lying outside a house. Soon, there were a host of curious onlookers and no one to claim the unattended cash.

A call was made to the Keshavpuram police station at 1.27pm. A police team arrived at the spot, but they too didn’t want to take chances. “We cordoned off the street and sent the onlookers into their homes. One of us wore hand gloves to pick up the notes. We then sprayed them with sanitizer and packed them in an envelope,” said a senior police officer.

The police asked around, but didn’t find anyone who would claim the cash. The residents of the house outside which the currencies were found too did not claim them. “No one had picked the money off the street. No one would claim it either. It felt like Ram Rajya,” said the officer.

But the suspense over the notes ended soon after the policemen returned to the police station. “A woman, Charanjeet Kaur, visited the police station to claim that the notes belonged to her,” said Vijayanta Arya, deputy commissioner of police (north-west).

Kaur, a 49-year-old teacher at a government school in nearby Shakurpur, told the police that the notes were a part of a sum of ₹10,000 she had withdrawn from an ATM in RG City Centre, a mall in Keshavpuram.

“Afraid that the notes could be carrying the virus, she had washed them with sanitizer and put them on a table in the balcony of her second floor house to dry. The wind may have blown away three of them,” said DCP Arya.

Kaur had remained unaware of the drama when the police had landed outside her house. It was only when she walked out to her balcony, that she got to know of the missing notes and the drama that had unfolded.

The police asked her to produce the other notes she had withdrawn. “The notes found on the street were of the same series as the other notes with her. We gave back the currencies to her,” said the DCP.

Though studies indicated that the virus, transmitted through droplets, could be passed on even from dried surfaces to humans, there is not enough scientific evidence on how long it survives on currency notes.

Earlier, some residents of Saharsa in Bihar had found currency notes scattered outside their homes. The currencies were accompanied by notes which said, “I have come with Corona. Accept this note, otherwise I’ll harass everyone”.