RPF arrests 4 fake railway agents, seizes e-tickets worth over Rs 17 lakh

Kolkata: Railway Protection Force (RPF) personnel from Eastern Railway arrested four agents and seized e-tickets worth Rs 17,38,252 on Monday. Two hard-disks were also confiscated.

"As a part of Eastern Railway's continuous endeavour to eliminate touting activities and fake agents, RPF of Eastern Railway has arrested four fake Railway ticket agents from a cyber cafe situated at Akbar Road, Durgapur, with recovery of 28 future journey Railway e-tickets valued at Rs 1,10,255 and 588 used tickets valued at Rs 16,27,997. RPF has

also detected about 34 fake 'IRCTC Personal' IDs. In this connection, RPF has registered a case u/s 143 of Railway Act," said an official of Eastern Railway.

He reiterated that the fake agents were detected by using the PRABAL (passenger record analysis for action against burglary, touting and loss of articles) app developed by the Railways.

During e-monitoring the history of passenger details on PRABAL, some user IDs were identified as suspicious by the ER/RPF team and on Sunday, a massive raid was conducted at the Akbar Road cyber cafe.

Two related hard-disks have also been seized by the RPF team of Durgapur for further investigation.

During the subsequent interrogation, all the offenders disclosed that they had been regularly doing the illegal business of touting by using about 34 fake IDs and mobile numbers.

Meanwhile, one additional AC 3-tier coach has been attached with Kolkata-Gorakhpur-Kolkata Poorvanchal Express, 15049/15050 Kolkata-Gorakhpur-Kolkata Express & 15051/15052 Kolkata-Gorakhpur-Kolkata Express to cater to the rush of passengers.

The additional AC 3-tier coach will be attached with Kolkata-Gorakhpur-Kolkata Poorvanchal Express (four days a week), leaving Gorakhpur from November 24, 2019 to March 31, 2020 and leaving Kolkata from November 25, 2019 to March 31, 2020 on its nominated days of run.