Man held for forging AC local tickets

A 21-year-old man was arrested for forging AC local tickets and using them to travel on the Western Railway. He had reportedly been doing it since September 2022.

Mumbai: A 21-year-old man was arrested for allegedly forging AC local tickets and using them to travel from on the Western Railway (WR). The accused – identified as Aman Nakhrani – boarded the Churchgate-Borivali AC local from Bandra on Monday.

HT Image

During a routine check, the ticket checking and vigilance department staff came across Nakhrani, a WR official said, adding, “He displayed his UTS ticket on his mobile phone, however, the ticket checking (TC) staff found it to be fishy. The TC asked him to open the UTS app and then show the season pass. To this, the accused said that the pass was in some other phone and he had an image of the quarterly season pass.”

The TC said that such travel isn’t allowed and asked him to pay a fine. He then scrutinised the Dadar-Mira Road quarterly pass of ₹4,800 which Nakhrani showed. “There is a barcode in these UTS tickets which only the ticket checking staff can understand. They asked their control room to cross-check the ticket details to which it was found that it belonged to a completely different route,” said the WR official.

Prima facie it looks like the accused used some software to crop the UTS ticket and use it, the WR official said, adding that the man was later taken to railway police where on further investigation, he confessed that he has been doing it since September 2022 on the Churchgate-Virar route.

“Further investigation unearthed that Nakhrani used counterfeit passes multiple times and had circulated them to 11 members of his family and friends who were also later called up for investigation,” added the WR official.

The authorities seized counterfeit tickets worth approximately ₹48,000 from his mobile phone.

The accused was subsequently handed over to the GRP in Andheri for further legal action. After an FIR was registered under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code, GRP Andheri arrested Nakhrani.