New Delhi: The Railway Protection Force (RPF) has busted a massive e-ticketing rackets with the arrest of a 29-year-old man and seized 119 live railway e-tickets worth Rs four lakh that he had booked without authorisation.
Officials said the accused has been identified as Navneet Prajapati and a case under Section 143 of the Railways Act has been registered at the RPF post in Nizamuddin railway station.
They added that over 547 fake user IDs were found to be related with the accused's mobile number, all of which have now been blocked by IRCTC. It was further claimed that till now, 7,549 e-tickets worth Rs 1.5 crore had been issued from these IDs since June 2014.
According to a press statement from Northern Railway, on Tuesday, under the ongoing special drive against touting, an RPF team of Delhi Division under the direction of Senior DSC Shashi Kumar seized the suspect's mobile number with the help of IRCTC.
"On enquiry, the accused revealed that he had earlier been arrested by CBI, Bengaluru, in connection with the illegal business of railway tickets and remained in jail for about three months," said the press statement.
During interrogation, the accused confessed that he has been involved in the illegal railway tickets business since 2014. He was running the business under the name of 'Aadhar Kendra'.
Meanwhile, in another raid, an RPF team on Tuesday arrested two persons, identified as Amit Chopra and Ekam Singh. Officials recovered 39 live railway e-tickets, valued at nearly Rs 1.35 lakh, which were booked using five fake personal user IDs. In the last four years, e-tickets worth Rs 12.59 lakh were issued by these user IDs. Most of the tickets were booked for foreigners.
A case has been registered under Section 143 of the Railway Act at RPF Post in New Delhi railway station against both accused.