NEW DELHI & BENGALURU: In the biggest seizure of cash in new currency post-demonetisation, the Income Tax Department on Thursday confiscated Rs 4.7 crore during searches in a dozen premises in Bengaluru and other locations.Officials said the searches were launched on the premises of two engineers working with the state government and some “connected persons“. Ten teams headed by officials from Karnataka and Goa raided the houses in Sadashivanagar and RMV Extension. “Banks are struggling to get cash to distribute to their customers. A branch has got barely Rs 10 lakh. We are investigating how these engineers managed to get new notes of Rs 2,000 notes,“ senior I-T official said.“During the course of searches, Rs 4.7 crore in new denominations of Rs 2,000 and Rs 30 lakh in old and smaller denominations to Rs 5 crore and seven talling kg bullion worth approximately Rs 2 crore were found in a flat owned by a civil contractor. The new notes and bullion are learnt to have been obtained by exchanging demonetised notes by payment of commission of an engineer and a contractor,“ the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), the policy-making body of the tax department, said in a statement here.The sleuths also seized some notes of Rs 500 and a few Rs 100, demonetised notes of "gold biscuits during the operation, it said, adding the department had to call in notecounting machines and additional staff to ascertain the value of the cash.“This is the highest seizure of the new currency in the country post the currency ban on November 8. Some entry operators and bankers in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu are under the scanner. Such volume of new currency cannot be obtained without connivance of bank officials,“ a senior I-T department official said.The department has also found a number of identity cards of various individuals from the searched premises which could have been used to illegally change the old currency with new ones.Taxman has also seized documents of property purchase from the premises, even as they found a battery of luxury cars parked in these locations.“The investigation is still in progress and the search action is still continuing in ten premises,“ the CBDT statement added.Only yesterday, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) had seized Rs 10 lakh cash in new notes of Rs 2,000 from the premises of a Kolkata-based doctor.The agency conducted nationwide search operations on Wednesday at 40 locations and seized about Rs 1crore in new notes. Both the I-T department and the ED, along with other enforcement agencies and police, are undertaking these operations after reports of instances of illegal exchange of old currency and stashing of new currency notes to perpetrate hawala and money laundering like activities.