Three more Chinese nationals living in Uttar Pradesh's Gautam Buddh Nagar, near Delhi, were arrested on Saturday after two of them were found without visas and one with forged Indian documents, officials said.

The accused were arrested by the Special Task Force of the Uttar Pradesh Police after being taken into custody and an inquiry was conducted into the alleged violation of Indian laws by them, they said.

"Those arrested have been identified as Chen Junfeng and Liu Pengfei, both staying in Greater Noida, and Zhang Qichao, who lived in Noida. The visas of two of them had expired, while the third accused possessed an Aadhaar and a PAN card made on forged Indian identity," an official told PTI.

Further legal proceedings in the case are being carried out, the official added.

This comes in a series of arrests and detentions of around 30 Chinese nationals in just two months who were found either staying illegally in Noida or Greater Noida or in violation of Indian laws.

The Uttar Pradesh Police is separately probing a suspected hawala racket linked to a Chinese national who was staying in India illegally since 2020 but was arrested on June 13 this year.

Xue Fei alias Kelly (36) was staying in a Greater Noida society with his Indian girlfriend Petekhrinuo (22), who hails from Nagaland. She has also been arrested. Xue Fei had been running an illegal restro-bar at a remote village in Greater Noida where Chinese nationals staying in India were the chief patrons.

A month later, the police arrested four more Chinese nationals suspected to be associated with the same hawala link.

Separately, the police had on July 13 detained 14?Chinese?nationals, including a woman, for allegedly staying in Noida with expired work visas.?

These 14?people were working for a mobile phone company but their visas expired in 2020. They were sent to a detention center in Delhi where proceedings for their deportation were started, according to the officials.

On July 27, the police arrested five Chinese nationals who were staying illegally in Greater Noida since 2020 after their visas had expired, the officials said.

(Inputs from PTI)