Kolkata, Jan 3 (IANS): Kolkata Police on Tuesday said that it recovered unaccounted cash worth Rs 56 lakhs from two trading hubs in the city.

The cash was retrieved during search and seizure operations on Monday evening conducted by sleuths of the city police's Anti-Rowdy Squad (ARS) and cops of a local police station.

"Following the operations at Rabindra Sarani and Mahatma Gandhi Road, Rs 56 lakhs worth of cash was seized and nine persons were arrested," a city police official said.

ARS sleuths were tipped off by their sources that for the last few days, huge amounts of cash were entering the city through the Hawala route.

First the joint operations team raided a warehouse at Mahatma Gandhi Road and arrested one person there. An amount of Rs 15 lakhs was recovered from his possession.

Thereafter the joint operations team went to an office at Rabindra Sarani and recovered and arrested eight more persons. An amount of Rs 41 lakhs were seized from their possessions.

Cash recoveries in the city have become a common affair since July last year.

During this period, sleuths of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) recovered cash worth around Rs 50 crore, along with huge gold items, from two residences of Arpita Mukherjee, a close aide of former state education minister and Trinamool Congress secretary general, Partha Chatterjee.

Both are currently in judicial custody because of their alleged involvement in the multi-crore teachers' recruitment scam.

In September 2022, the sleuths of ED recovered huge cash from the residence of a local businessman in Garden Reach area following a raid in connection with E-Nuggets, a mobile gaming app scandal.