Railway Tickets Worth Rs 43 Lakh Seized As RPF Cracks Down On Hi-Tech Touts. 6 Held

The accused were involved in the development and sale of illegal software using social media, including Telegram, Whatsapp. They also provided fake virtual numbers and user IDs of IRCTC.

New Delhi: The Railway Protection Force (RPF) under ‘Operation Uplabdh’ arrested six people and seized 1,688 tickets valued at Rs 43,42,750 during a crackdown from touts involved in illegal railway ticketing, said the ministry of railways in a statement Monday. Indian Railways have been struggling to cope with a high demand for seats and berths while catering to the nation with a population exceeding 1.3 billion.  “This demand-supply gap has led to mushrooming of many touts who use different means to corner reserved seats and then sell them to the needy on premium”, the ministry said. To tackle this menace, RPF has undertaken intensive and sustained action against persons involved in touting, the ministry said.

“Use of illegal software for cornering confirmed railway reservations online had adversely affected the availability of confirmed tickets to the common man,” the statement added. The operation targeted people involved in touting (unauthorized carrying on of business of procuring & supply of railway tickets).

Accused arrested under ‘Operation Uplabdh’

Based on the pinpointed digital input supplemented by Human Intelligence, an RPF team on May 8 captured Mannan Vaghela of Rajkot for using illegal software to corner railway tickets in bulk.

Another accused Kanhaiya Giri, a super seller of illegal Software Covid-X, Anmsback, Black Tiger etc was arrested from Mumbai on July 17 based on the information provided to the police by Vaghela.

Giri who spilled the beans and revealed the names of other associates and admin/developer led to the arrest of Abhishekh Sharma of Vapi on July 20. Abhishekh Sharma confessed to having been the admin of the illegal softwares.

"On the basis of leads provided by the arrested accused persons, three more accused namely Aman Kumar Sharma, Virendra Gupta and Abhishekh Tiwari were arrested from Mumbai, Valsad (Gujarat) and Sultanpur (UP) respectively. RPF is in search of a few more suspects involved in this case,” RPF said.

In the past, they had procured and sold tickets worth Rs 28.14 crore earning huge commissions, the ministry informed.

These accused were involved in the development and sale of this illegal software using social media i.e. Telegram, Whatsapp etc.they also used to provide fake virtual numbers and user IDs of IRCTC.  They had software to create fake IP addresses used to bypass the restriction imposed on customers to obtain a limited no of tickets per IP address, informed the ministry. They sold disposable mobile numbers and disposable emails too which are used for OTP verification to create fake user IDs of IRCTC, the statement added.