Sitapur (UP), Aug 28 (IANS): A woman in Sitapur district in Uttar Pradesh organised an elaborate 'puja' with around 40 priests that lasted for 11 days and then duped them by paying them with coupon notes, also known as amusement currency.

The incident took place in Terwa Manikpur village and the priests have now lodged an FIR of fraud and criminal breach of trust against the woman, identified as Geeta Pathak, wife of G.R. Pathak, at the Rampur Mathura police station.

Laxmi Singh, Inspector General of Police (IGP), Lucknow range, said the woman has been taken into custody and is being quizzed about the incident.

A large number of similar coupon notes, with 'Manoranjan Bank of India' mentioned on them, were recovered from her vehicle.

"As per the complaint of a priest named Dilip Kumar Pathak from Bahraich, the woman hired him to conduct an 11-day ritual in her village and promised him Rs 9 lakh for all the arrangements. After the rituals were over, the woman handed Pathak and 39 other priests, who had participated in the event, a bag allegedly containing currency notes as a gift. But when they checked later, they found that the notes placed on the top were real currency notes while the remaining were amusement notes of the face value Rs 5.53 lakh," Singh said.

The coupon notes were in the denominations of 2000, 500, 100 and 10.