INDIA. Mumbai: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Thursday conducted searches at 12 locations across Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and Delhi in an ongoing investigation of a case related to the illegal sale of reserved e-tickets of Indian Railways through the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) website.
The case was registered in Delhi earlier. It was alleged that one of the accused used the unauthorised App and website to book the e-tickets without authorisation by IRCTC or the railway. Through the business, the agents, distributors, software developers, website managers, the owner and other chains of people were involved in developing and selling tickets.
The CBI registered the case on March 2, 2021, against an unidentified person who was claiming to provide confirmed “Tatkal” seats (emergency tickets) using a software and mobile application.
“During the investigation, it was found that the agents were allegedly using illegal software to bypass the manual entry process for purchasing tickets, which were sold to travellers at a premium. The CBI identified the agents involved in this illegal activity and conducted simultaneous searches,” the CBI statement read.
In the searches, digital devices, mobile phones containing illegal software, incriminating documents, and other details including tickets of passengers booked earlier using the illegal software were recovered. The CBI said that the person responsible for selling and distributing the illegal software to various agents was also identified.
The official website for IRCTC tourism is “www.irctctourism.com”. The fraud website-www.irctctour.com looked almost similar to official website. The website has now been taken down with a message: “The Account has been suspended”.
The Indian Railway’s ticketing portal has warned users of a fraudulent website offering tourism packages. In IRCTC’s warning mail to users, the details of the fraudulent website, including the mobile and landline numbers and email addresses, have been mentioned.
The IRCTC has also noted that the tour confirmation voucher used is precisely the same as the original one used by IRCTC. A warning message about the fraud website has also been flashed on the genuine IRCTC website. There is, however, no information on how many users have been scammed through this fraud. Regarding IRCTC, there is only one platform to get all tourism bookings done.
IRCTC was incorporated on September 27, 1999, as an extended arm of the Indian Railways to upgrade, professionalise and manage the catering and hospitality services at stations, trains and other locations and promote domestic and international tourism by developing budget hotels and special tour packages.
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