Another Tatkal Scammer Held – 6603 Tatkal Tickets Worth Rs 1.47 Crore Recovered!

Ever wondered why thousands of genuine passengers are left stranded without tickets, while some ticketing agents always assure confirmed tickets?

It is because of scammers and fraudsters, who abuse the system and make a fool of the whole tatkal process.

In another such revelation, a ticketing fraud has been unearthed, and the cops are shocked to recover 6000+ tatkal tickets!

Tatkal Tickets Scam Unearthed: 6000+ Tickets Recovered!

A 32-year-old scammer named Salman Khan has been arrested, who is being accused of running a massive tatkal ticket fraud pan-India.

Allegedly, he ran a big network of scam ticketing agents all over India: 5400 agents were working with him.

Following a tip-off, a combined team of Railway Police Force (RPF), Crime Intelligence Branch (Panvel) and the anti-tout squad of Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus and Oshivara Police in Jogeshwari (West) raided Salman’s location, and what happened next surprised everyone.

A total of 80 e-Tickets under Tatkal quota were recovered, amounting to 1.04 lakh.

After interrogation and scanning his computers, the cops found out about 6,603 eTickets, amount to a total of Rs 1.5 crore.

Salman has been booked under section 143 of Railways Act.

Modus Operandi Of The Tatkal Ticketing Fraud

As per Sachin Bhalode, senior divisional security commissioner of Central Railway, Salman owned a software which helped ticketing agents to unethically and illegally book tatkal tickets.

The software was named as ‘Counter’, which subverted the railways’ reservation system.

These 5400 ticketing agents working with Salman used to pay Rs 700 per month to use the software, and illegally book Tatkal tickets.

Basically, ‘Counter’ software bypassed IRCTC captcha and bank OTPs requirements, which consume 50-60 seconds for a genuine user. An operator of ‘Counter’ can open multiple tabs in a browser, and it auto-fills the name of passengers and other details.

As soon as Tatkal booking opened, the software quickly booked the tickets by bypassing captcha and OTPs.

Subhash Gupta, a former member of Zonal Railways’ Users Consultative Council said,

“The IT department of IRCTC should come down heavily on such software so that thousands of passengers logging on to the website are not cheated. Unless this case is taken to its logical conclusion, the recovery of crores of rupees will be of no value.”

This software was capable of issuing 6000 tickets, per day.

Earlier, an employee of CBI was arrested for running a similar tatkal ticket racket by using illegal software.

We hope such fraudsters are arrested, and genuine passengers are able to book their tickets fairly.