A Japanese court dismissed on Tuesday a damages suit filed by a man accused in a fraud case, after cash confiscated from him and kept in a police safe was stolen.

Kazuaki Nakayama, 35, had argued that the Hiroshima prefectural police were negligent in managing 85.72 million yen seized from him in February last year as evidence in his fraud case. He is currently on trial for allegedly swindling people out of 6.43 million yen.

The cash was being kept in the Hiroshima Chuo Police Station's accounting division safe. A police officer found the money gone around 8 p.m. on May 8 last year. The cash remains missing.

Nakayama says he can no longer repay the people he intended to compensate because the confiscated cash is now gone.

But the Hiroshima District Court ruled Tuesday that the police had no obligation to return items confiscated by investigative authorities.