RAJKOT: Ever wondered how a huge chunk of railway tickets get sold off within minutes of the booking opening? You would have thought that thousands of other passengers logged into the IRCTC website before you did, but that may not be true.
A well-oiled scam involving web developers, ticketing agents and touts, who booked multiple tickets using illegal software, has been busted by the Rajkot railway protection force (RPF) with the arrest of six people from Gujarat, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh.
Investigation revealed they had procured and sold tickets worth Rs 28.14 crore in the last six to eight months across India. They earned huge commissions by selling the tickets at exorbitant prices to the needy passengers, most of whom wanted bulk bookings.
The RPF had launched ‘Operation Uplabdh’ to trace touts using illegal means for mass booking of tickets through the IRCTC website. Based on human intelligence, they arrested a Rajkot-based travel agent Manan Vaghela on May 8 and found that he was using an illegal software named Covid-19 to corner the tickets in bulk.
On searching his computers and mobile phones, they got to know of a person named Kanhaiya Giri of Mumbai, who was selling illegal software named COVID-X, ANMSBACK, Black Tiger and others.
When Kanhaiya Giri was caught on July 18, he revealed the names of software developer Abhishek Sharma of Vapi, who was arrested on July 20.
In the course of investigation, three more people, Aman Kumar Sharmar of Mumbai, Virendra Gupta of Valsad and Abhishek Tiwari of Sultanpur, UP, were caught. All were involved in using the dark web to develop and sell software using social media like Telegram and Whatsapp groups.
“If a normal traveller took around three minutes to book a ticket, these scamsters could book hundreds in the same time using these software which provided fake virtual numbers and fake user IDs of IRCTC,” said an RPF official.
They also created fake IP addresses to bypass the limit imposed on the number of tickets that one customer can book. “Simply put, the software hacked the timings when bookings opened for trains and multiple ticket requests were generated,” explained Abhinav Jeph, senior commercial divisional manager, Rajkot.
“They sold disposable (temporary) mobile numbers and disposable emails too which are used for OTP verification to create fake user IDs of IRCTC,”the official explained.
As many as 1,688 tickets worth Rs 43 lakh for which the journey was not initiated were seized from them. Five laptops, seven mobiles, a portable hard disk, 8,336 fake IRCTC IDs and 50 fake sim cards were also seized from them.
A well-oiled scam involving web developers, ticketing agents and touts, who booked multiple tickets using illegal software, has been busted by the Rajkot railway protection force (RPF) with the arrest of six people from Gujarat, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh.
Investigation revealed they had procured and sold tickets worth Rs 28.14 crore in the last six to eight months across India. They earned huge commissions by selling the tickets at exorbitant prices to the needy passengers, most of whom wanted bulk bookings.
The RPF had launched ‘Operation Uplabdh’ to trace touts using illegal means for mass booking of tickets through the IRCTC website. Based on human intelligence, they arrested a Rajkot-based travel agent Manan Vaghela on May 8 and found that he was using an illegal software named Covid-19 to corner the tickets in bulk.
On searching his computers and mobile phones, they got to know of a person named Kanhaiya Giri of Mumbai, who was selling illegal software named COVID-X, ANMSBACK, Black Tiger and others.
When Kanhaiya Giri was caught on July 18, he revealed the names of software developer Abhishek Sharma of Vapi, who was arrested on July 20.
In the course of investigation, three more people, Aman Kumar Sharmar of Mumbai, Virendra Gupta of Valsad and Abhishek Tiwari of Sultanpur, UP, were caught. All were involved in using the dark web to develop and sell software using social media like Telegram and Whatsapp groups.
“If a normal traveller took around three minutes to book a ticket, these scamsters could book hundreds in the same time using these software which provided fake virtual numbers and fake user IDs of IRCTC,” said an RPF official.
They also created fake IP addresses to bypass the limit imposed on the number of tickets that one customer can book. “Simply put, the software hacked the timings when bookings opened for trains and multiple ticket requests were generated,” explained Abhinav Jeph, senior commercial divisional manager, Rajkot.
“They sold disposable (temporary) mobile numbers and disposable emails too which are used for OTP verification to create fake user IDs of IRCTC,”the official explained.
As many as 1,688 tickets worth Rs 43 lakh for which the journey was not initiated were seized from them. Five laptops, seven mobiles, a portable hard disk, 8,336 fake IRCTC IDs and 50 fake sim cards were also seized from them.