Indian police victim of own anti crypto law, cannot seize confiscated bitcoin

The police of Pune, a city in the West Indian state of Maharashtra, have asked the court to make an exception to a recently established rule. Last year, 85 million rupees (one million euros) of bitcoin were seized from a ponzi. This bitcoin must be sent, but this is not possible due to regulations.

A million euros frozen

On October 3 the police explain the situation in the Times of India. They cannot move 244 cryptocurrency units with a value of one million euros. These are blocked on the bank account of the Discidium Internet company. They were hired by the police at the time to convert the seized cryptocurrency into Indian rupees.

Senior Indian cyber police inspector Jairam Paygude said the Central Bank of India could not transfer the money to the State Bank of India’s treasury in Pune because the Discidium Internet account was frozen by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) .

Discidium Internet disputes the validity of the RBI blockade. The RBI has forbidden transactions in virtual currencies. At the request of the RBI, the Central Bank of India has instructed to freeze the account of Discidium Internet.

Bitcoin ban and brain drain

We wrote about this ban earlier. That prohibition is not yet anchored in legislation, but is already being acted upon in some places. The concept is described in Banning of Cryptocurrency and Regulation or Official Digital Currency Bill 2019. It proposes a ten-year prison sentence for anyone who “mined, generates, owns, sells, transfers, fulfills, issues or trades in cryptocurrencys.”

Local crypto companies are already being forced to take preventive measures. Rahul Jain of the Indian crypto exchange Bitbns about this:

“As a startup from India, we always wanted to work from India, but these developments have made it difficult for domestic crypto exchanges to work from India. So we are now a Estonian based company and any Indian law to criminalize crypto has no impact on us. “

In this way, India is expected to lose a market worth 12 billion euros.