CBI arrests IRCTC Official for cornering Railway Tickets

CBI arrests IRCTC Official for cornering Railway Tickets

‘ The accused had allegedly interfered with the IRCTC system by installing a software at travel agents’ offices’

Bangalore (SBC): The CBI, Bengaluru on Wednesday raided 11 locations across different States and busted a racket in cornering railway tickets.

The Anti Corruption Branch (ACB) of the CBI registered a case against Shahid, Assistant Manager, IRCTC, New Delhi and others.

The CBI officials said, “The accused had allegedly conspired and interfered with the IRCTC booking system by installing a software programme in the computers at various travel agents’ offices by which the agent can book six separate tickets, each for six passengers per ticket, i.e. 36 passengers in one go, where as in normal course an agent can book tickets only for six passengers at a time.”

The travel agents cornered tickets, which were then sold at higher prices. CBI claims to have recovered incriminating documents, hard disks, tatkal tickets and material used for creation of multiple IRCTC windows. Sleuths also raided vendors of New Trained Software, which was used by the racketeers.

On Wednesday, the police conducted simultaneous, coordinated searches at 11 locations spread over different states and unearthed the ticketing fraud. They seized incriminating documents, laptops, hard disks, and tatkal tickets that were used for creation of multiple IRCTC windows for generating multiple tickets at a time. They also raided the ‘offices’ of the agents supplying this software in Mumbai to Kolkata and seized their computers.

“All the electronic data will be sent to forensic labs and examined to unearth the mechanism,” a CBI source said.