This year, between January and April, while 362 cases of such ticket frauds were registered across the country, 167 — or about 45% — of the cases were registered by the RPF unit of WR.
Over half of all the cases registered by the Railway Protection Force (RPF) against touts and travel agents for committing frauds in the purchase of e-tickets — the ones available on the IRCTC website — are from Western Railway (WR).
This year, between January and April, while 362 cases of such ticket frauds were registered across the country, 167 — or about 45% — of the cases were registered by the RPF unit of WR. Last year, the primacy of WR's RPF unit was just as pronounced with 300 out of the 818 cases registered nationwide emanating from WR.
Scaling up their operations against touts, the RPF registered 49 cases and arrested 51 people between June 16 and 29 and recovered tickets with a face value of Rs12.76 lakhs. Andheri station topped the chart with 10 cases, while Borivali and Surat accounted for 6 cases each.
According to Anand Vijay Jha, senior divisional security commissioner of RPF-WR, the joint sessions his team had with the anti-fraud e-ticketing team of the IRCTC has been of great help. "We had four sessions with the IRCTC in 2015. Now, thanks to the data given to us by IRCTC, we have a map of the entire city where authorised travel agents have their business," said Jha.
The power given to the RPF in April to analyse call data records (CDR) has also been of great help. "It allows us to get the big fish, i.e. the travel agents running these rackets, rather than just the lower hierarchy who operate on a need-to-know basis," said Jha.
Currently, the RPF on WR has 10 dedicated teams that have been given the mandate to conduct decoy as well daily surveillance of ticketing agents in order to catch any unusual ticketing activity.
"It is good the railways is working on this aspect. It is frustrating when tickets on the internet get cornered by travel agents and the common passenger has to pay through the nose for a reservation. The irony is double because these touts are using the railway's infrastructure to fool passengers and fill their pockets," said Bhandup resident Manish Chaturvedi.
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