Working on a tip-off a team of personnel of Railway Protection Force (RPF) conducted a raid on the premises of a travel agency in Bokaro Steel City. One person was arrested in this connection, 14 Tatkal tickets were seized, police said.
During the raid 14 Tatkal tickets and several e-tickets issued on personal ID were seized from M/s Raj Ventures, Naya More, said lal Babu Yadav RPF Inspector. “We have also seized one laptop and one desktop computer including several incriminates documents from the premises”, he added.
The total value of these tickets is Rs 32,225, said Yadav adding, “One owner of the said agency was arrested Under Section 143 of The Railways Act and we are interrogating him”.
Notably, the stiff action of the Railway Administration put an end to the touts physically buying tickets. Now travel agencies have taken a new method of extorting money from the passengers by creating a number of personal IDs with IRCTC (Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation) for online ticketing of the Indian Railways.
Unauthorized buying and selling of reserved tickets is an offence under Section 143 of the Railways Act, he said. “Passengers who buy tickets from unauthorized travel agents may lose both their tickets and the reserved accommodation if such tickets are seized during raids,” added Yadav.
Now the travel agents are making wealth through e-tickets. They used to charge between Rs 500 to Rs 1500 from passengers for anywhere while they are permitted to charge only Rs 20 per person, he said. “By using many personal IDs travel agents can book any number of tickets while with their official ID they can only book 20 tickets in a month,” he added. Yadav appealed to the people to avoid purchasing of rail tickets from unauthorized agencies and touts. Beside others, RPF OC RK Singh, Inspector Kumar Rajeev, R Kumar and BN Yadav were in the CIB team.