Written & Edited By : Aditi Mishra
16 August 2023 ( New Delhi) : A 47-year-old man has been detained by the Railway Protection Force (RPF) for allegedly breaking into the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation’s (IRCTC) e-ticketing website. According to a TOI report, Moinuddin Chisti, an accused man from Dadri, allegedly used unlawful mobile applications to reserve tatkal and VIP quota tickets before reselling them for inflated prices. Over the span of two years, Chisti, who runs a railway ticketing business in Greater Noida, earned an estimated Rs 30 lakh.The cybercrime section in Prayagraj informed the Dadri unit of the RPF about Chisti’s activities. Red flags were triggered by the suspicious tatkal and premium berth bookings made from a mobile number in the Dadri area. The cybercrime cell learned that Chisti created personal user IDs on the IRCTC website using illicit software programs like Nexus, Bigboss, and Sikka_V2.
By automating the submission of necessary information, these applications speed up online booking, drastically cutting down on booking time.
These unlawful practices have occurred before. A 22-year-old computer engineer who used the Nexus app to illegitimately book tatkal train tickets was arrested in July as a result of a joint operation involving the RPF and police teams from Dadri and Aligarh. These tickets were afterwards sold for more money, generating profits of Rs 15 lakh.
Law enforcement was able to locate Chisti at his railway ticketing business in Ayodhya Ganj after performing a technological investigation of the IP address associated with the mobile phone. He was detained on Monday in accordance with Section 143 of the Home Railways Act of 1989, which addresses illegal commercial activities connected to obtaining and distributing train tickets. Chisti was arraigned before a magistrate and was jailed on Tuesday.Two laptops, a printer, a phone, and money were taken by authorities from his store. Additionally, 88 train e-tickets for Rs. 1.55 lakh that he recently purchased were detected.
