More train ticket touts held in 7 months than all of 2015

MUMBAI: The number of train ticket touts arrested by the Railway Protection Force (RPF) on Western Railway (WR) in the first seven months of this year has surpassed

MUMBAI: The number of train ticket touts arrested by the Railway Protection Force (RPF) on Western Railway (WR) in the first seven months of this year has surpassed the total number arrested in the whole of 2015.

HT Image

A sustained crackdown on touts by the RPF is behind the dramatic increase in arrests. RPF officers arrested 301 touts, mostly in the western suburbs, and seized 4,889 tickets, worth Rs1.10 crore, between January and July this year.

By comparison, 268 touts were arrested between January and December 2015 and 3,771 e-tickets, worth Rs1.34 crore, were seized from them.

An RFP official said the jump in the number of arrests was also down to a rise in the number of touts, owing to an increasing demand for reserved train tickets.

An RPF officer said, “These touts operate mostly via word of mouth and use special software to buy online tickets in bulk.”

The RPF recently busted a racket in Charkop and arrested Umesh Nanchanda Shah, 54, and Pawan Rashmikant Shah, 28. They seized 283 tickets, worth Rs10.89 lakh, which the two had booked for members of a community for a pilgrimage to Bihar’s Vaishali district, scheduled for the last quarter of 2016. The police also seized a computer program called ‘Engage’ that touts use to book tickets in bulk online.

“These auto-fill programs, which are easily available, are used to compromise the railways’ online booking system to book tickets in bulk,” added the RPF officer.

Tickets to popular tourist destinations such as Jodhpur, Jaisalmer, Jaipur and Mumbai are in high in demand among both tourists and touts, another RPF official said. “We have formed several teams to ensure a sustained crackdown on touts. Continuous action is needed to counter their activities,” said Anand Vijay Jha, senior divisional security commissioner, RPF, WR.