Railway Police arrest 5 in e-ticketing racket

The Railway Protection Force (RPF) on Tuesday arrested five persons all accomplices of Ghulam Mustafa, a self-taught software developer from Jharkhand who was arrested earlier this year in an e-ticketing racket, and seized Rs 3.5 crore worth railway tickets and crores of money from their possession, officials said.

The five people were arrested for allegedly tampering with the railway ticket system.

According to the RPF, the gang used to infiltrate railway ticketing system using software ANMS and MAC. Moreover, they also used to get information about any upgradation done by the railways to stop such activities

RPF Director-General Arun Kumar said that after the arrest of Ghulam Mustafa, places in Mumbai, Lucknow, Bangalore, Jodhpur, Shillong were under surveillance and led to the unearthing of money laundering and terror funding activities on a large scale.

Those arrested have been identified as Shamsher, Jayant Poddar, Satyavan Pandey, Hamid Ashraf, Prajapati.

Kumar said, "After the arrest of Ghulam Mustafa, we took action against all the players who were in this field. The main action took place in Mumbai, Lucknow, Bangalore, Jodhpur, Shillong."

He also said that the links of those arrested people were found with groups operating from across the border.

"Jayant Poddar who is from Kolkata has links with Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB). Prajapati was arrested from Surat and Rs 3.5 crore tickets were seized from his possession.

The senior official said that the railway ticketing system has been made foolproof.

RPF said that all the culprits in this e-ticketing racket will soon be caught.

In January this year, Ghulam Mustafa was arrested, He was found to be running a Youtube channel, in which he told people how to hack tickets.

A total of 566 personal IRCTC IDs and a list of 2,400 SBI branches, E-cards from Pakistan, Bangladesh and 600 regional rural banks where he is suspected to have accounts were seized from his possession.