New Delhi: Cracking its whip on illegal ticket software, the Railway Protection Force (RPF) on Tuesday arrested seven people, including a Kolkata-based mastermind who was in touch with Bangladesh-based terror outfit Jammat-Ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JUMB).
The RPF has nabbed at least 60 people till date in connection with the e-ticket scam, Kumar said since December last year, including those who were associated with black marketing of Tatkal tickets while using the illegal software, making it virtually impossible for others to get Tatkal bookings.
Railway Protection Force (RPF) Director-General (DG) Arun Kumar said the cleansing operation means Tatkal tickets would be available for passengers for hours now, compared to a minute or two earlier after the booking opens.
"As of today, I can say that not one ticket is being booked through illegal softwares. We have plugged all the issues that we had with the IRCTC website and also nabbed most of those who were top operators of the software," said Arun Kumar.
He further explained that the illegal softwares like "ANMS", "MAC" and "Jaguar" were being used by these agents which used to bypass the IRCTC's login, booking captcha and bank OTP procedure for tickets.
DG RPF claimed that Poddar was the lead seller of the illegal ANMS software and was even in contact with cattle smugglers, hawala operators, fake currency operators, and fake identity cards makers.
RPF DG said, "During the probe, it was found out that Poddar transferred money through Smart Shop, a mobile wallet owned by Hermes I-Ticket Ltd. Hermes had transactions worth crore with two other companies- Sifa Enterprises and Wifi Solutions owned by Rajesh Yadav, which showed transactions of Rs 23 crore."
Kumar said during questioning that Poddar gave further leads that Hermes had transactions worth crore with two other companies -- Sifa Enterprises (about Rs 5 crore) and WiFi Solutions owned by Rajesh Yadav, which showed transactions worth Rs 23 crore.
After the arrest of Poddar and Yadav, they arrested Shamsher from Lucknow, who used to work with Hamid Ashraf, a Dubai based, suspected to be one of the masterminds of this racket.
After that RPF arrested Satyawan Upadhyay, who developed the illegal MAC software for ticket touting.
"Following the lead more persons from Ahmedabad and Surat- Danny Shah and Amit Prajapati were held, and also recovered 8,569 tickets worth Rs 2.59 crores," said Arun Kumar.
He even said that the cleansing operation of illegal softwares means that tatkal tickets will be available for passengers for hours now as earlier the booking process for general users usually takes the time of around 2.55 minutes but those using these illegal softwares could do it in just 1.48 minutes.
With the arrests, Kumar said most of these illegal softwares, which used to generate business of Rs 50 crore-100 crore annually, have been blocked.
The IRCTC's ticket booking section reflects the impact of the railway action as it shows a jump in the availability of Tatkal tickets across the board. (With agency inputs)
Also read: Tatkal Tickets: Railways roots out illegal software, 60 agents arrested in 2 months
