Nagpur: Railway Protection Force (RPF), Central Railway, have busted an alleged unauthorized ticketing racket, running with at least 80 IDs, following a raid at the office of Shobha Travels at Sadodaya plaza near Mayo Hospital on Friday.
The raid, in which 32 live e-tickets worth Rs92,239 of around 68 passengers were seized, also led to the abrupt cancellation of around a dozen of journeys.
The raiding team, which also seized two computers, one laptop and other materials, arrested the kingpin Manish Bhargav from the office. Bhargav was earlier arrested in 2016 by RPF’s Crime Intelligence Branch (CIB).
The latest raid is learnt to have revealed a fraud which may run into several lakhs unearthing details of at least hundreds of e-tickets prepared through tatkal and other regular services offered on Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Limited (IRCTC) portals.
Senior Divisional Security commissioner (DSC) Jyoti Satija, supervising the probe, said that even some of the CIB personnel of his unit are under scanner. “We will conduct a thorough probe to unearth the entire racket which had been depriving the passengers their rights. We will also not spare any black sheep in our system if we can find their involvement in this racket,” he said.
The senior DSC said Bhargav had a well-oiled network comprising at least 15 men under him. “We are also not ruling out involvement of railway officials and also a close family member of Bhargav who is a government employee,” he said.
Satija also said that his unit will join hands with South East Central Railway RPF under DSC Ashutosh Pandey to conduct raids at different places. “We are still trying to find the software components which was used by the racket and whether it had any link with any Mumbai-based network,” he said.
Satija gave credit to senior inspector AC Sinha and the team of officers including RPF Nagpur in-charge Virendra Wankhede for the successful raid.
he also said the cyber experts from his unit is now trying to uncover the modus operandi of the racket. “The racket was using an auto-filling software which allowed booking of a ticket within 18-20 seconds while it takes almost 30 seconds to one minute in the normal course,” said Satija. He has also appealed citizens not to approach such agents as this may get them into legal troubles.
Bhargav has been booked under section 143 Act of The Railways Act. RPF will now seek custody remand of Bhargav for further probe.