8:38 PM
New Delhi: In
what appears to be a first-of-its-kind cheating syndicate, Indian
railways has been duped to the tune of Rs 100 crore by fraudsters who
would take refunds for used tickets by creating a fake copy of the same
using stolen details within two hours after scheduled departures. The
Railways has zeroed in on the biggest reason behind the perennial
complaint of passengers not being able to get confirmed tickets even
after turning up at the ticket counters at 8 am, when they open across
India. This pan-Indian cheating came to light during vigilance checks by
Northern Railway, and it was found out that for the last six months the
unidentified conmen had claimed refund of about Rs 60 lakhs by
cancelling tickets of train originating from national capital alone.
A senior railway official putting the
total loss to over Rs 100 crore said: “If gone through the conservative
estimate based on fraud detected in Delhi, in all possibilities the
number will go up many times after taking into account similar frauds
conducted in other cities, especially the tier two and three. Final
figure can be calculated only after carrying out intensive checking and
investigation across the country, but our initial estimate is roughly Rs
100 crore.”
This would also remind us on the
vulnerabilities in the Information Security and Data Privacy and Policy
Compliance parameters that proved to be vulnerable to attacks on entire
Indian Railways.
Explaining the unique modus operandi of
the gang, the senior railway officer added: “After procuring the
passengers’ details either by hacking or assistance of an insider, the
gang members would wait till ninety minutes from departure of the train.
They would then approach any reservation counter in any part of the
country and would ask the official to claim the refund citing his
inability to travel.” Officials added that gang members used place
names like Vijayawada and Madurai and other remote areas in the South
and North-east to claim the refund.
Railway sources told that an insider may be helping the miscreants by providing passengers details.
With this, Railways is now planning to
investigate such cases across the country. Once this type of fraud is
curbed, there are ample chances of securing confirmed train tickets on
popular routes by the general public.
This is why you can never book a ticket at 8 am
Also, an internal investigation revealed
that every day, 4,000 confirmed berths would be hoarded by touts within
one minute of the computer reservation system being thrown open to
public.
The probe found that the touts, who sell
tickets at a higher price to passengers in need, were exploiting a
“facility” in the passenger reservation software. The facility allows
someone who has already purchased a ticket to alter journey details and
book another train within seconds at the last moment.
Touts would buy tickets for relatively
less popular trains a day earlier, and then swap them for tickets on
popular trains — Rajdhanis, Durontos and other long-distance trains —
between 8 am and 8.01 am. This would take seconds since their booking
details were already fed into the system.
“Touts would buy any ticket a day in
advance and the next day, they would get ticket details changed. The
booking clerk merely had to generate another PNR with the passenger
details already fed into the system a day earlier. This took seconds,”
Ajay Shukla, Member (Traffic), Railway Board, told media. “We have now
disabled this facility for the first hour after the system opens,” he
added.
The probe, launched after the Railways
Ministry found a huge number of tickets being booked this way, also
indicated that booking clerks and other insiders were involved in the
racket. The ministry plans now plans to pinpoint the culprits and take
action.
After disabling the facility for the
first hour, the Railway Board officials monitored the booking pattern
across the country for the past few days. Now, instead of 4,000
journey/train changes in the first minute, only a few such changes are
made in the course of the day. “We believe those are genuine
transactions by passengers altering their journeys,” Shukla said.
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