Railways on right track to bust Tatkal touts

Indian Railways is systematically monitoring user IDs, payment gateways and booking locations to bust touts who block ‘Tatkal’ tickets before users can book them, particularly during the festive season, according to three senior officials familiar with the development.

The officials said that this method is a big shift from — and proving to be far more effective than — the traditional crackdown through field intelligence on gangs selling train tickets at higher rates.

Tatkal (or immediate) tickets can be booked a day before a train’s departure for 10% to 30% more than the base fare. Before reaching the final booking page, a user spends about two minutes filling basic details. A Railway Protection Force (RPF) official said that touts, on the other hand, were using software that took them directly to the payments page.

As a result, when the Tatkal bookings opened for passengers at 10am, officials found that all tickets were sold out in seconds.

The touts would buy these tickets, and often sell them at double the price to individuals who contact them for tickets.

“Field intelligence was not sufficient to break such gangs who are hi-tech. So we contacted tech experts and started monitoring the Indian Railways ticket booking website. We monitored if similar user IDs (such as jumbo 1, jumbo 12 or jumbo 123) are being used for bookings,” said a second official, who is part of RPF’s investigation team.

“The second method was to see if same payment details were used for multiple bookings. A fake user will not change the payment details for every booking. We also checked the location through URLs used at payment gateways and conducted live raids,” he added.

IN A FIRST, USER IDS, PAYMENT GATEWAYS, BOOKING LOCATIONS BEING MONITORED TO BUST TOUTS