Surat: Two people were arrested on Thursday for hacking the railway e-booking website irctc.co.in to generate hundreds of tatkal tickets. The arrested individuals, Rajesh Mittal (55) and Krupa Patel (24), had generated 652 tickets and earned Rs 16.17 lakh by hacking the website using illegal software named Gadar and Nexus, which were found on their laptops.

The Mumbai vigilance team received a tip-off that Rajesh was booking tatkal tickets through hacking. Following this, along with Umra Police, the WR vigilance team conducted a raid at a flat in the Citylight area on June 25. Upon entering the flat, the teams found Krupa while her boss Rajesh was working on six laptops and creating journey-cum-reservation tickets (JCRT). The team found 54 live JCRT tickets, for which Mittal had charged a total of Rs 1.51 lakh. All 54 tickets were blocked before the journeys commenced. Upon inspecting the laptops, it was revealed that Mittal had booked a total of 598 tickets worth Rs 14.66 lakh in May-June 2024. The vigilance team also found numerous card details and other payment information on the laptops.

The duo was handed over to the Umra police, who arrested them based on a complaint filed by vigilance inspector Sanjay Sharma. They were booked for cheating and other relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Information Technology Act.

The technical team found 973 robot-generated user IDs and passwords used to book the tickets, which Mittal sold for Rs 600 to Rs 900 each.

More on this:

– Ekta travels is run by a migrant from other State Rajesh Mittal. It would bypass the verification and security system of IRCTC and book confirmed tickets in bulk.

– Vigilance team conducted raid jointly with local Police.

– 973 bogus IDs, 5 laptops, 5 high-speed routers and two softwares namely Nexus and Gadar are seized.

– With use of these software, Mittal led firm booked e-tickets worth Rs. 4.50 crores as per prima facie investigation.

– Mumbai based Vigilance Inspector of Railways Sanjaykumar Sudhir Sharma has filed a complaint in Umra police station of Surat in this regard.

– The raid was conducted on 25 June at Mittal’s Meghsamaran apartment based flat in Citilight area of Surat. When raided, Mittal was on bed and operating five laptops to book e-tickets.

– The other accused nabbed in this case if Krupa Patel from Althan(an employee of Mittal).

– With the use of specialized softwares, Mittal could bypass the system and just after entering the names of passenges, he would be able to go to the payment option directly without going through OTP and captcha etc. As the bank details are uploaded in advance, the payment could be done directly without OTP.

– Mittal booked Rs. 2.88 crore worth 3600 e-tickets trough Gadar software.

– The raiding team has also found 10 different bank accounts in the names of Rajesh, Yash, Sudha and Anchal Mittal.

– Rs. 14.66 lakh worth tickets on which journeys are yet to commence were also found in the raid. The Railways has blocked all these tickets.

DeshGujarat