RPF busts e-ticket racket, one arrested

NEW DELHI: In its biggest crackdown on illegal ticketing in railways in recent times, the Railway Protection Force has arrested a self-taught software developer from Jharkhand in an e-ticketing racket which is suspected to have links to terror financing, a senior official said on Tuesday.

Addressing the media, Arun Kumar, RPF Director General, said, “After we launched the Operation Thunderstorm last year against ticket touts, a name -- Ghulam Mustafa -- kept on appearing on our radar.”

Ghulam Mustafa was arrested from Bhubaneswar. He has 563 personal IRCTC IDS, and a list of 2,400 SBI branches and 600 regional rural banks where he is suspected to have accounts, said Railway Protection Force (RPF) DG Arun Kumar.

“For the last 10 days, the IB, Special Bureau, ED, NIA, Karnataka Police have interrogated Mustafa. “Dimensions of money laundering and terror financing are suspected,” he said in a press briefing.

Kumar also named Hamid Ashraf as the mastermind of the racket which is suspected to generate revenue of ~10-15 crore per month. Ashraf, who is also a software developer, was involved in the bombing of a Gonda school in 2019 and is now suspected to have fled to Dubai, Kumar said.

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

“We have also traced a person named Guruji, believed to be the group’s technical expert, who recently received ~13 lakh from Mustafa,” Kumar was quoted as saying by news agency IANS. Guruji was using Yogoslavian number of VPN to avoid the identification, he added.