RPF: Ticketing racket with terror links busted

nNEW DELHI: The Railway Protection Force (RPF) on Tuesday said it has busted a gang involved in ticketing scams , money laundering and suspected terror financing with links to Dubai, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

The RPF has detained 27 suspects so far. The gang’s alleged mastermind Hamid Ashraf, who was arrested in 2016 by a joint team of CBI, railway vigilance and local police in 2016 from Uttar Pradesh’s Basti, is absconding. His current location is suspected to be in Dubai by the RPF. Ashraf was also involved in a case of bombing at a school in Gonda in Uttar Pradesh, the RPF said.

The armed force of the national carrier has arrested Jharkhand-based Ghulam Mustafa. The gang was earning about ~5 crore per month through this, the RPF said.

“After we launched a nationwide exercise against touting activities — Operation Thunder — Mustafa’s name began appearing a lot. Mustafa and the gang used advanced software and laundered the cash through the use of the dark net. They were also laundering money through bit coins and crypto-currencies. Mustafa had nearly 563 personal

IRCTC accounts and a list of 2,400 SBI branches and about 600 regional rural bank branches where he appeared to have operated accounts,” RPF DG Arun Kumar said.

Mustafa was arrested from Bhubaneswar earlier this year. The RPF said it seized two laptops with software named ‘ANMS’, through which Mustafa had bypassed the barriers set up to curb illegal ticketing, such as providing captcha and bank OTPS.

The ANMS software worked in tiers, with the main developer at the top of the chart, followed by the lead sellers or ‘super admins’ who handled money and sent them to Ashraf through Hawala accounts and cryptocurrency, the DG said. Lower on the order were panel sellers, the people who bought the software for selling tickets, and the last tier included agents, he said.

The railway police has also tracked the involvement of an Indian software company in the ticketing racket. Kumar said Mustafa was interrogated by the NIA, Karnataka Police and the Intelligence Bureau.

The RPF has also identified a Singapore-based software firm that was receiving money from the group. The company is being investigated by the Singapore Police for money laundering.