In a significant crackdown on illegal ticketing activities, Western Railway's Vigilance Team has apprehended individual involved in generating unauthorized e-tickets. Acting on precise information, the team executed a meticulous operation on December 20, 2023, in the city limits of Silvassa, Dadra & Nagar Haveli state.
Use of illegal software to produce e-tickets
The vigilant team, in collaboration with the City Police, caught the culprit red-handed, who was employing illegal software to produce e-tickets. e-tickets worth more than Rs.33 Lakh detected from culprit operating illegal software to generate tickets.
According to Western Railway, in a movie-like scenario, the Vigilance Team acting upon a tip, apprehended a person from his residence during the time of Tatkal booking hours. Shashi Prakash Singh, resident of Silvassa City was operating an illegal business of railway reserved tickets by using multiple illegal software. Western Railway’s Vigilance Team along with City Police entered the residence of the culprit without giving any scope or clue. The joint team seized the laptops and took access to all the associated systems and software that were in use.
Upon further investigation, it was uncovered that the culprit was operating two illegal softwares viz; Nexus and Gadar for generating E-tickets which were purchased by him online. These software facilitates users to pre-fill all the booking particulars of multiple forms, IRCTC IDs & passwords, and payment details and thereby automating the entire ticket booking process with capabilities of generating multiple confirm tickets in a matter of seconds. The software also bypasses the CAPTCHA (which is a type of security measure known as challenge-response authentication) while booking e-tickets automatically through the IRCTC website. Further, it was noticed that the culprit was using 240 live IRCTC IDs purchased by him online (@ Rs.20/- each). He was also found operating 3 servers at a time with 5 different IP addresses.
Tickets worth over Rs 1.20 lakhs seized
A total of 38 Live tickets (Tatkal and Opening) amounting to over Rs.1.20 lakhs were detected from his laptop which was subsequently seized and blocked in the system. Furthermore, the ticket history of the past 30 days (from 20th November to 20th December) recovered from software Nexus and Gadar was thoroughly checked, wherein a total of 539 PNRs were found generated amounting to about Rs. 14.62 lakhs.
"The detailed investigation revealed that the culprit was using and operating 17 E-mail addresses for sending tickets to passengers. On scrutiny of the Sent Items of all E-mail IDs, 631 E-tickets amounting to Rs. 17.36 lakhs were detected. The culprit was handed over to IPF/Vapi and a case under Section 143 of the Railways Act 1989 has been registered. This operation marks a significant step in combating the black marketing of Railway tickets, ensuring fair access to train travel for all passengers." said an WR official.
