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Three People Die While Waiting In Queue To Exchange Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 Currency Notes

This is just tragic.
People stand in the queue to enter into the bank to withdraw money and exchange the discontinued notes.
NurPhoto via Getty Images
People stand in the queue to enter into the bank to withdraw money and exchange the discontinued notes.

MUMBAI -- Amid woes of customers hit by cash crunch, three people have reportedly died while waiting in queue to exchange their currency notes.

Police said that a 73-year-old man, waiting in queue to exchange his old currency notes, collapsed and died in suburban Mulund this afternoon, the police said.

Vishwanath Vartak, a senior citizen, was standing in queue outside a branch of the State Bank of India in Navghar area of Mulund (East) to exchange his notes when he suddenly fell, they said.

As he fell, some people, who were also in the queue, rushed him to a nearby hospital where he was declared dead before admission, the police said adding that the body had been sent for postmortem.

The police also visited the spot where the elderly man collapsed.

According to initial reports, Vartak died of a heart attack, police said.

Following the government's decision to scrap the Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, there has been a huge rush outside banks since Thursday and at ATMs on Friday as anxious people wanted to withdraw money to meet their daily expenses.

Police patrolling is being done and beat marshals are deployed outside the banks and the ATM centres to avoid any untoward incident and control the crowd wherever necessary.

Two Die In Kerala

Meanwhile, another elderly man standing in queue collapsed and died, while another fell to his death while filling forms to deposit over Rs five lakh worth scrapped high denomination notes as banks in Kerala continued to witness huge surge of customers for the second day today.

The police said 75-year-old Karthikeyan from Kumarapuram in Haripad in Alappuzha district was standing in a queue at a branch of the State Bank of Travancore, when he collapsed and died.

In the other incident, Unni (48), working as an overseer in the Kerala State Electricity Board fell to his death while he was filling the necessary forms to deposit Rs 5.50 lakh he had with him. Initial reports say it was an accident, police said.

The police said the man had taken a loan from his PF account and had come to deposit it in the bank when he fell from the second floor of the building. He had stood in the queue for some time, the police said.

A case of unnatural death has been registered.

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.