The Central Railway (CR) has collected Rs 108.82 crore in fines by catching 17.22 lakh ticketless travellers across five divisions in the last seven months. Out of these, 6.83 lakh passengers were detected in the CR’s Mumbai division alone.

As per data from the five divisions, over 23,816 passengers were caught maskless, and 5,203 were caught violating the Covid-19 norms between April 1, 2021, and November 6, 2021. A total fine of Rs.39.68 lakh and Rs.26.02 lakh was collected from them.

“The Bhusaval division recorded 4.68 lakh cases, Nagpur division saw 2.51 lakh cases and Solapur, Pune divisions registered 3.2 lakh cases,” said a CR official.

He added that the Bhusaval division registered a record revenue of Rs. 33.74 crore, followed by the Mumbai division with Rs 33.2 crore. They were followed by the Nagpur division with Rs. 16.73 crore and Rs 17.15 crore by Solapur, Pune divisions and Headquarters special teams.

Till November 2020, over 1.4 lakh passengers and a fine of Rs 5.4 crore were collected from them. The fall in numbers was due to a nationwide lockdown.

While in 2019, close to 27.21 lakh people were caught, and Rs 142.94 crore was collected as a fine.

The sudden spike in the recovery is attributed to sustained special drives conducted across five railway zones in the last seven months, which saw record revenue of Rs.100.82 crore collected from 17.22 lakh passengers.

“Central Railway in its endeavour to provide better services to bonafide rail users and also to curb ticketless travel, is regularly conducting intensive campaigns against ticketless and irregular travel in suburban and non-suburban/Mail Express special trains under Government guidelines and following Covid-19 appropriate behaviour,” said chief PRO of Central Railway, Shivaji Sutar.

The CR has appealed to the passengers to travel with proper and valid railway tickets to avoid any inconvenience.