13 touts nabbed for selling train tickets, Rs 6.46 lakh seized

The Railway Protection Force (RPF) has nabbed touts who promised train tickets to people in distress and collected double the fare.

Over the past two weeks, the RPF conducted raids on various travel agencies in several places under the Bengaluru railway division and caught 13 persons who were booking railway tickets by employing special software.

"We have registered 11 cases and arrested 13 individuals involved in touting activities and charging premium fare from passengers. Rs 6.46 lakh has been seized from them,” Senior Divisional Security Commissioner Debashmita Bhattacharya Banerjee said.

The accused charged Rs 1,500 or more for a ticket that cost less than Rs 1,000, she added.

Though the IRCTC portal has a mechanism to prevent touts from booking multiple tickets, RPF officials said the accused had employed various software to bypass it.

“In March, we had busted such elements and put an end to the use of illegal software. They are using different methods now. One of them was a Google Chrome extension,” they said.

All the accused were booked under Section 143 of the Railways Act.

150 girls rescued, sent to Odisha

As many as 150 girls, who were forced to work against their will in a factory in Bengaluru, left the city on Tuesday night.

Banerjee said that the girls aged between 15 and 19 were rescued by the International Justice Mission with which the RPF has been running a special campaign ‘Nanhe Farishte'.

The railways arranged food and water to all the girls, who breathed a sigh of relief to board the train.

“The NGO managed to get an order from the jurisdictional court in favour of the girls. Most of them are educated with many studying in classes 9 to 12. We sent them home today with the message that they should not stop their education,” Banerjee told DH.