Western Railway confiscates e-tickets worth Rs 8 crore in Gujarat

MUMBAI: The Western Railway (WR) made the largest e-ticket seizure in the country on Monday with the arrest of a person in Ankleshwar, Gujarat, and the confiscation of 29,227 e-tickets worth Rs 7.97 crore.
The WR said the arrested man, Amit Prajapati (34), operated more than 50,000 user identities on the Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) portal. WR officials said he was a software engineer and also sold software for a living, besides dealing in Bitcoins.
They said Prajapati had admitted to accepting money through hawala. They said he was a cog in the wheel and was somewhere in middle or higher rung of the entire racket.
"We have sought remand to identify the people with whom he works," inspector general A K Singh, who is principal chief security commissioner (WR), said. "A staggering 50,568 user identitieswere found in the control panel of the accused. We are trying to collect PNR data from IRCTC."
While some of the tickets seized were already used, a total of 8,569 e-tickets that were seized and blocked were still to be used. These e-tickets alone were worth Rs 2.59 crore.
"Passengers should refrain from booking tickets from touts as they are liable to be blocked if the transaction is found to be fraudulent," WR chief public relations officer Ravinder Bhakar.
A railway official said the action had come on a tip-off about the suspected IP address of an agent through which the bookings were done to corner reserved confirmed tickets on various long-distance trains.
The Railway Protection Force (RPF) then began a search for the internet service provider of the given IP address. It was found that the agent had used the broadband services of GTPL in Surat, which falls in WR jurisdiction.
The geographical location was then tracked down through the ISP.
The software used by Prajapati allows the agent to hack into the IRCTC identity. The agent is able to book multiple tickets faster than the IRCTC website. These tickets are then sold at a premium to customers across the country.