Nepal to imprison, fine people writing on currency notes
Kathmandu, Aug 9 : Any damage caused to currency notes and coins by tearing, burning, writing and drawing lines on them will be a crime in Nepal as per a new law coming into force from August 17.
As per the Criminal Procedure Code Act 2017, those damaging currency notes and coins through the aforementioned acts could face imprisonment up to three months and a fine up to 5,000 Nepali rupees ($45).
Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB), the central bank, in a directive on Wednesday asked the banks and financial institutions to ensure implementation of the law through their staffers, Xinhua news agency reported.
In a separate notice, the central bank also reminded the general public about the legal provisions.
Laxmi Prapanna Niraula, chief of the Currency Management Department at the NRB, said on Thursday that the implementation of the law would help prolong the life of currency notes which in turn would help the NRB in making some savings.
It is the first time that the law has made a provision for penalizing those who write or draw lines on the currency notes. Earlier, only those responsible for making and circulating counterfeit currencies in the market faced a penalty.
The NRB prints bank notes through security printing presses in different countries every year.
According to the NRB, notes worth 458 billion Nepali rupees ($4.15 billion) were currently in circulation in the market. Thirty per cent of these were believed to be dirty due to drawn lines or written words.
"Using those notes in the market however will not be illegal for now," said Niraula. In order to increase the stock of clean notes in the market, the Nepali central bank has not been sending dirty notes in the market.
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
