RPF raid Goregaon shop, find e-tickets worth ₹3K booked using fake ID

The investigators learnt that the accused sold the tickets at a premium of Rs200 to Rs 300

A team of Railway Protection Force (RPF) officials raided a mobile repairing shop in Goregaon (West) on Thursday and arrested a 26-year-old man for allegedly booking e-tickets fraudulently and selling them on the black market. The officials said the accused, Subhash Bamaniya, had been doing this since the past few months. He would charge passengers 10 to 15 per cent more for these e-tickets for outstation trains heading mostly for north India.

Bamaniya operates the ‘Indian Mobile Bhagat Singh’ shop at Mata Mandir Link Road. RPF personnel, including PN Singh, Devishankar Pandey and Dheeraj Pal Singh kept a watch on the shop and raided it around 5.30pm.

The officials found e-tickets worth Rs3,193 which Bamaniya had booked minutes before the raid, using his fake customer ID. The officials seized a jet printer, four mobile phones and one laptop. They are scanning the laptop to find how many bookings he made using the fake ID.

“Bamaniya is an unauthorized agent and he was involved in selling e-tickets on the black market with his friend Surendra Ram Singh. He confessed to black-marketing of railway e-tickets generated from the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) website using his friend’s fake IDs,” said Anand Jha, senior divisional security commissioner, RPF, western railway.

The investigators learnt that he sold the tickets at a premium of Rs200 to Rs 300. He shared his profits with Singh.

A case of booking e-tickets fraudulently and black marketing railway tickets (touting) has been registered against them. The RPF is trying to trace Sing. Bamaniya will be produced in a railway court on Friday where officials will seek his custody to conduct a further investigation.