Noida (PTI): Noida Police on Tuesday said it has busted a fake currency racket here with the arrest of five people and seized counterfeit notes of the face value of around Rs 6.50 lakh ahead of local body polls in Uttar Pradesh.

According to police, the gang members were inspired by the popular web series 'Farzi' and used Instagram to connect with their network spread across Delhi-NCR, and parts of Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.

Additional DCP (Noida) Shakti Avasthy said the arrest has been made by officials of Sector 24 police station and the recovered banknotes include forged notes of denominations 2000, 500 and 200.

"The five people arrested are Faiz Khan, Shibu Khan, Aditya Gupta, Ayush Gupta and Hari Om Atri. They had a chain of network to supply fake notes. They got double the number of fake notes like Rs 200 in fake notes for Rs 100 real currency and the profit margin increased up to four times as one went higher up in the supply chain," Avasthy told reporters.

"Three men were wanted in connection with the case. One of them has been identified as 'Singhania', who lives in Chhapra district of Bihar, and printed these notes, the other is 'Bhola', who stays in Delhi and the third goes by the name of 'Mobin' in Lucknow," the officer said.

The police said the accused used WhatsApp with virtual phone numbers to evade tracking.

"They also used Instagram for networking and made reels related to fake currencies. They got in touch with their clients through comments on YouTube videos. They were also inspired by a web series which was released two to three months ago," Avasthy said.

Of those held, Shibu had been working in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, while Faiz was in Kuwait until recently, the police said. The police said the fake notes were being procured from "Singhania" in Bihar and "Bhola" in Delhi. Both of them were printing the fake notes, police said.

The main accused, Faiz Khan, lived in Kuwait and ran his business in Bihar, Lucknow, Noida, Jaipur and the Delhi NCR region, police officials said.

An FIR has been lodged under Indian Penal Code sections 420 (cheating) and provisions pertaining to counterfeit Indian currency notes, they added.

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Batumi (Georgia), Jul 26 (PTI): Young Indian International Master Divya Deshmukh held her nerves to hold stalwart Koneru Humpy to a draw in game 1 of the FIDE Women's World Cup final, with both players having their share of opportunities to take the lead here on Saturday.

The draw with black means Humpy, the two-time World Rapid champion, holds a slight edge going in the second and final game under the classical chess rules in the two-game mini-match, and should the deadlock continue, games of shorter duration will be played to determine the winner.

Humpy employed the Queen's gambit accepted as black and it turned out to be a pretty fascinating game right out of the opening as Divya, 19, came up with a piece sacrifice early to deny the black king the right to castle.

Humpy was the first to err and, according to computers, Divya had things under control on the 14th move. However in her bid to recover the extra material, the Nagpur girl, who has secured a place in the Candidates tournament with her sterling performance here, missed a promising continuation.

What followed the exchange of all minor pieces and the ensuing queen and rook endgame gave enough counter play to both players. The game was eventually drawn after Humpy sacrificed her rook to force perpetual checks.

"The game saw an extremely sharp battle with the game ending in a draw in 41 moves. On move 7, Divya made her aggressive intentions clear by offering another pawn,

which looked like home preparation. Humpy made a practical decision of refraining from taking the pawn and a balanced position was reached by move 10 by white," said Grandmaster Pravin Thipsay, an Arjuna awardee and the first Indian to get a chess Grandmaster norm.

"However, instead of developing the undeveloped Knight, Humpy retreated the centralised Knight on move 10, giving huge positional advantage to Divya. Divya could have gained huge positional advantage on the 12th move by moving a rook. However, she chose to play for King side attack by sacrificing a piece instead.

"Humpy, too, erred at this stage and instead of moving the King to Queen side, moved it to the King side. Divya, on move 14, could have obtained a crushing attack by threatening a mate by developing her Queen. Instead she chose to exchange a pair of Bishops first, which enabled Humpy to defend her King by returning the piece," said Thipsay.

"Players thus reached a balanced Queen and two Rooks ending. Divya continued to play ambitiously and tried to attack Humpy’s King but the latter defended accurately and the game was drawn in 41 moves by perpetual check," he added.

In the play-off for the third place, Chinese players Zhongyi Tan, the former women's world champion and top seed Lei Tingjie also decided to split points out of a Queen’s gambit declined game.

The opening raised visions of a close contest between the two but having been knocked out of title race in the previous round, none of them wanted to take any huge risk. It was still a middle game when the players shook hands.

With the top two positions sealed for the Indians, the berth to the next Candidates is also assigned, while the player finishing third will also get an entry to the premier event scheduled for 2026.

Results: Divya Deshmukh (Ind) drew with Koneru Humpy (Ind); Zhongyi Tan (Chn) drew with Tingjie Lei (Chn).