The next time you visit an ATM to withdraw money,be careful as cases of ATMs dispensing fake notes are being reported from across the country. And a common refrain by customers is that the banks have turned their backs on them. Alarmed by the complaints,the Reserve Bank of India has made it mandatory for the currency chest branches of all banks to have verification and sorting machines. Senior bankers of the city claim that these machines are in regular use at their respective banks. As Chief Manager S L Paul at Punjab National Bank points out: All the notes to be supplied to banks are verified through the machine. Fake and soiled notes are separated. Only genuine notes and those in good condition are supplied to our branches and to the ATMs. Similar claims are made by officials of SBI,ICICI,HDFC and other banks. But what about customers who have already got fake notes by the automated teller machines? Top officials of public and private banks assert that unless the consumer is able to prove that the note was taken from its ATM machine,nothing can be done. A senior official at the local head office of State Bank of India,Sector 17,says: The onus is on the customer to prove that he got the note from a particular ATM. It is simply impossible that banks will exchange a fake note with a real one,if any person comes and claims that it is from their ATM. This is where the aggrieved customers reach a dead end. Take the case of IAF Corporal Prakash G,who got a fake currency note of Rs 1,000 from a private banks ATM in Sector 19 D. Prakash had withdrawn a total of Rs 9,000. What caught his eye was that while the other notes were crisp and new,one note was badly soiled. He met the manager of the nearest bank branch,who told him the note could not be exchanged till it was confirmed that it came from their ATM. Where to goPossession of fake currency notes is punishable with the guilty being awarded up to life imprisonment under various clauses of Section 489 A of the IPC. Passing on a fake currency note knowingly is an offence too. According to RBI instructions,a fake note should be given at a bank,which will then stamp the note as counterfeit,and also file an FIR with the police. You need not fear police action if you can give convincing evidence of how you got the notes. How to check if a note is genuineThe portrait of Mahatma Gandhi,the seal of the Reserve Bank of India,the Ashoka Pillar emblem,the guarantee and promise clause and the RBI Governors signature are printed in relief on genuine notes. These can be felt by hand in notes of denominations Rs 20,Rs 50,Rs 100,Rs 500 and Rs 1,000. On the other side,a vertical band on the right of Mahatma Gandhis portrait carries a latent image showing the denominational value of the particular note. Hold the note horizontally at eye level,and this image becomes visible.
