Read this if you also get your air tickets booked by an agent
BEWARE! If you are booking your air tickets with the help of an agent, you could be duped and fooled with a fake e-ticket. The trouble would double-fold when you will be nabbed by the CISF and have to undergo detention.
According to sources at IGI Airport, forged e-tickets have emerged a new threat to the Delhi airport security as it has become difficult for the CISF officials to identify the difference between original and forged e-tickets.
In almost 95 per cent cases, the CISF officials allow the passengers to enter the airport premises on the basis of the e-tickets. Later, either the airlines counter identifies those tickets as forged or their suspicious movements alert the staff.
In some cases, a passenger is duped by the agent who had booked the ticket on his/her behalf, while in other cases, people use the cancelled tickets to enter the airport premises.
A similar case was reported at IGI airport in which a passenger was duped of over a lakh by an agent, who is absconding. On Friday, Kalagaradath Olavanna, 25, wanted to deport to Sharjah by Air Arabia flight. He was given entry to the airport premises on the basis of the e-ticket printout, a passport and an ID.
However, when he showed his tickets to the airlines counter staff, he refused the entry as his ticket was not genuine and his name was not in the passengers list. Then he contacted his ticketing agent Kapil who had sent one Shyam Babu with the real ticket.
"When Shyam reached IGI Airport, he gave him the similar ticket that was again refused by the airlines counter. Shyam was arrested and he provided police the whereabouts of Kapil. Teams have been sent to nab him. A case under the sections 420, 468, 471 of the Indian Penal Code has been registered," a police officer told Mail Today. There is no proper system to identify the authenticity of a ticket at the entry gate itself.
"It is dangerous since a person is allowed to enter the airport building when he shows the e-ticket and an ID. If the provision of installation of PNR readers at the gate is provided, it can reduce the risk," the officer said.
In August, a Sri Lankan has been caught at IGIA for entering a terminal allegedly using a fake ticket. He told CISF personnel that he had come to see off his mother, who was travelling to Colombo from the IGIA.
In association with Mail Today
