Racketeers charged more for AC berths

LUCKNOW: If you tried to get a tatkal ticket for your urgent travel and were left gasping as all seats got filled within seconds of opening of reservation, blame it on the vendors who used fraudulent means to book multiple tickets and sold them later at a premium.
The four vendors arrested on Friday told railway cops during interrogation that they used to keep copies of identity proofs of passengers who came for booking tickets and later use them to create user IDs on Indian Railway

Catering Tourism and Corporation (IRCTC) website for booking tickets.This was the sixth gang caught in the past one year.
Divisional security commissioner, northeasternrailway, Sehrish Siddiqui told TOI that four IRCTC-authorised ticket vendors arrested on Friday revealed that they started their work early morning.
They had many computer systems with proper internet connection and also installed external hard drives to reduce the work load on the computers. They subscribed to 2-3 leased line internet connections, so that they could switch immediately to another in case of slow internet speed or collapse.
As soon as the taltkal window opened, the operators logged in with multiple user IDs via different windows and booked maximum tickets. Later they sold these confirmed tickets to needy passengers at a premium of up to Rs 1,400. An authorised IRCTC ticket vendor can generate eight online IDs on singleidentity proof, but RPF found these racketeers were creating hundreds of IDs.
Hundreds of photocopies of government IDs and address proofs were recovered from the four racketeers arrested in Aliganj, said Siddiqui. The gang used to hire fresh graduates who were well versed in operating computers and internet. Mostly, the gang generated tickets of air-condition (AC) coaches.