PUNE: Railway passengers will now find it a little easier to book tatkal tickets after the Cyber Cell of Railway Protection Force (RPF) Pune busted a racket of illegal software such as Red Mirchi, I-ball, ANMS, MAC and Jaguar and deactivated them.
The Pune railway division RPF helped other divisional offices in the country to nab the mastermind of this crime, which was siphoning off tickets to fraudsters, who were then selling it at a premium.
According to a senior officer of RPF Pune railway division, “The deactivation of multiple illegal software to book railway tickets on IRCTC portal was one of the biggest challenges before the cyber cell. These software programmes were being developed and sold all over the country by the masterminds of this crime. Using the software, innumerable people were booking tickets illegally. This illegal trade was being conducted across the country through a secret network on the Internet.”
The Pune RPF Cyber cell analysis social media, for the systematic elimination of this crime, led to the identification of 12 websites selling the software called ANMS and detailed information was passed on to Railway Board, New Delhi.
“In the same sequence, a new list of 55 other super sellers was also released by Cyber Cell Pune, which extended to pan India jurisdiction. Secret surveillance and investigation of their IP address was initiated and information was obtained of main panel seller ‘Baba alias Satyabhan’, based in Kurla, Mumbai, who was trafficking a large number of train tickets using ‘MAC’ software. After proper confirmation, ‘Baba alias Satyabhan’ was arrested in Mumbai and a total of 4.57 crore tickets were seized from his server, which included 4,493 live tickets worth Rs 1.30 crore,” said a senior officer of RPF Pune division.
ACTION AGAINST AGENTS INDULGING IN ILLEGAL TICKET BOOKING
Cyber Cell Pune analysed data from PRS and IRCTC, related to legitimate railway ticket agents who were illegally trading railway tickets. Close to 300 such agents have been identified and information was shared with various divisions. Central Railway initiated action on the input, which resulted in the registration of cases against 55 authorised railway agents and arrest of 57 persons, deactivation 55 authorised agent IDs, 493 Future journey tickets, 642 past journey tickets total value of the seized tickets being Rs 24,50,605.
