The Reserve Bank of India sold $36.78 billion on a gross basis in October, almost double the $19.29 billion in September, indicating the scale of the central bank's defence of the Indian rupee's exchange rate, data released by the central bank Tuesday showed. At $36.78 billion, the RBI's gross forex sales in October is not far from its record monthly sales of $38.77 billion in July 2022. Since then, the central bank has sold foreign currency heavily in the spot market in Oct-Nov 2023, with the two months seeing gross sales of $73.88 billion.