Agent held for forging minister's letterhead to confirm

The Railway Protection Force (RPF) has arrested a travel agent from Mumbai for sending a request for railway ticket confirmation under emergency quota on a fake letterhead of Union Minister of State for Railways Suresh Angadi.

When Commercial Division of Central Railways in Mumbai received the request letter asking to confirm the waiting list tickets in different trains a few days back, suspected officials contacted the minister's office in Rail Bhavan at New Delhi.

The minister's office, which denied sending any such request, referred the matter to RPF for investigation.

Since it was e-ticket, through email id and address of agent registered in the IRCTC website, RPF officials traced the travel agent M Khan and arrested him within four hours. The police are also looking out for his associates, who were also involved in the racket.

During the investigation, the accused admitted that he looked up for Angadi's letterhead image on the internet and then downloaded it.

He then printed the ticket details on it.

The agent used to collect Rs 2,500 from passengers on the promise of giving them a confirmed ticket, said RPF officials.

Angadi has instructed the railway officials to take strict action against culprits, who try to take advantage of ticket confirming system under VVIP quotas.

This was not the first time such an incident was reported. Earlier, several travel agents have been arrested from different parts of the country for sending a request for confirming the ticket in fake letterheads of Union ministers and MPs to railway offices under Emergency Quota.