A 20-day covert operation ended on Friday with the Railway Protection Force, Nagpada police and antitout team of Central Railway busting a Rs 3.39 lakh ticket racket.
As many as 221 tickets, all issued through passenger reservation systems (PRS) at Churchgate and Mumbai Central, were recovered from Shivkant Chaudhary (38) and Bishok Kumar Jha (43), Mumbai Centralbased touts associated with National Communications and Mujawar Travels, respectively.
Shyam Rane and S K Singh of the railway's anti-tout team spent 20 days undercover to bust the racket by posing as passengers. "Officials conducted a daily recce before finally raiding the touts on Thursday. The confirmed tickets recovered were those of Pawan Express, Howrah Mail and Lucknow Express," a railway official who was involved in the operation said.
During their recces, officials discovered that the touts procured the tickets through PRS. "Jha was earlier an agent of IRCTC, but the agency contract ended in 2007. Despite this, he continued to deal in railway tickets, illegally," an official said.
Senior division security commissioner Alok Bohra said, "For the first time, we have managed to obtain fiveday police custody for touts. This will help us recover more tickets and get to the bottom of the racket." Chaudhary and Jha had a group of 20 helpers, who would occupy positions in queues and ensure that legitmate passengers were left without tickets.
Officials said that the two would then collect the tickets from the 20 men and hide them in small plastic boxes. "The boxes would then be handed over various people and stored at different locations, from where they would be sold in black," an official said. Another officials said, "In their statements, the accused claimed they were charging a premium of Rs 200 per ticket. However, when we approached them pretending to be passengers, we were asked to pay up to Rs 1,000 per ticket."
Officials told Mirror that action will also be initiated against officials who man the PRS centres. "The RPF crime btranch and anti-fraud squads of the railways will soon carry out raids to curtail similar rackets during the summer vacations, where the demand for tickets is at its peak," the official said.
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