An inter-state racket, comprising travel agents, touts, and software developers, has been unearthed by the Railway Protection Force (RPF) in Gujarat. Using illegal software, the accused bought confirmed tickets worth Rs 28.14 crore from the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) portal. They then sold them to travellers at a high commission. The fraud was underway for the last few months.
Divisional Security Commissioner of Rajkot RPF, Pavan Kumar Srivastava said that the RPF team of the Rajkot division of the Western Railway (WR) has so far arrested six persons and recovered 1,688 unsold tickets worth Rs 43.42 lakh from them.
The accused also used “disposable” mobile phone numbers and email addresses to create user IDs on the IRCTC portal to get the OTPs (One-Time Passwords) for booking the tickets.
“Based on a specific tip-off, our team had arrested Rajkot-based travel agent Manan Vaghela in May. Using illegal software, Vaghela used to purchase confirmed railway tickets from the IRCTC portal in bulk. Later, we arrested one Kanhaiya Giri from Mumbai in July for selling the software,” Srivastava said.
The RPF had also nabbed software developer Abhishek Sharma from Vapi town in the Valsad district of Gujarat. Based on the information provided by them, RPF nabbed three other members of the inter-state gang identified as Aman Sharma, Virendra Gupta, and Abhishek Tiwari. They were arrested from Mumbai, Valsad, and Sultanpur in Uttar Pradesh, respectively.In order to plug in such technical loopholes, senior Railway officials are also analysing the information provided by the accused.
