Three graduates learnt fake note printing from Instagram reels, arrested with 2549 counterfeit Rs 100 currency; gang avoided Rs 500 fearing stricter checks in shops

A checkpoint stop in Greater Noida on Monday night ended up exposing a counterfeit currency operation that police say had been running quietly for more than a year. Three men, all from Aligarh and all with some form of formal education behind them, were found carrying thousands of fake Rs 100 notes inside their car, according to a TOI report.

What makes the case stand out is not just the scale of the seizure but who was allegedly behind it. The accused are not hardened criminals with a history of forgery. They are a BSc graduate, a law student and a BA final year student, and police say they picked up the entire technique of printing fake currency from Instagram reels.

What Did The Accused Allegedly Do

Officers from Ecotech 1 police station, working with the Greater Noida special operations group, had set up a routine checkpoint at Sirsa Gol Chakkar. Around 10:50 pm, a black Scorpio was flagged down. Inside were the three accused, identified as Bunty Atri, 23, from Palar village in Aligarh, Khushdil, 21, from Kaseru village in Chandaus, and Upendra Kumar, 25, from Jala Kaseru village, also in Aligarh.

A search of the vehicle turned up 2,549 notes of Rs 100 denomination. Every single one of them carried the exact same serial number, a detail that immediately gave away the forgery and pointed investigators toward a printing operation rather than a one-off attempt.

How Were They Caught
Police say the arrest came almost entirely out of routine vigilance rather than a tip-off or a planned raid. The special operations group and the local station had been maintaining checks along the stretch, and the Scorpio was stopped as part of that exercise. Once the notes were found, the printer, a cutting machine and the SUV itself were all seized as evidence.

Why Did They Avoid Printing Rs 500 Notes
One detail that police flagged is how selective the gang was about what they chose to fake. The accused reportedly stayed away from the Rs 500 note entirely, a denomination that security staff at shops, banks and markets tend to scrutinise far more carefully. By sticking to the Rs 100 note, the gang appears to have calculated that it would pass through everyday transactions with fewer questions asked, even if the profit margin on each fake note was smaller.

What Did Police Say About The Seizure
Additional deputy commissioner of police, Greater Noida, Abhay Kumar Mishra, told TOI that the method used by the gang was fairly basic but effective enough to fool an untrained eye. "The men used to scan Rs 100 notes and made copies using their printer. They then used a cutting machine to separate the notes from printed sheets. To make the counterfeit currency appear genuine, the accused allegedly placed real notes on the top and bottom of bundles," he said.

Police also said that each fake note cost the gang somewhere between Rs 10 and Rs 15 to produce. To further pass off the bundles as genuine, the accused allegedly attached Canara Bank deposit forms to them using rubber bands, a small touch meant to make the stacks look like they were headed to or from a bank rather than a printer.

What Charges Do They Face

A case has been registered against the three men under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita covering counterfeiting of currency, using forged currency as genuine, and possession of counterfeit notes. The station house officer of Ecotech 1 police station confirmed the sections had been applied and said further investigation into the network was underway.

Police say the gang had been active for over a year before this arrest, which raises questions about how many fake notes may already be in circulation and who may have bought or passed them on. Investigators are now going through the seized mobile phones and digital transactions tied to the accused. Sources told TOI that the men had allegedly used their earnings from the racket to buy USDT, a dollar-pegged cryptocurrency, a trail that officers are now trying to trace to understand the full extent of the money and whether others were involved in moving it.

Inputs from TOI