Mumbai: An inspection of Godan Express, (Mumbai to Gorakhpur) by Central Railway’s vigilance department has revealed the illegal ticket selling activity taking place in trains during festival seasons. The investigation uncovered a racket designed to fraud people by selling counterfeit tickets.
Due to the festival, there are large number of people travelling from Mumbai to Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The Godan Express, train number 11055, which operates from Lokmanya Tilak Terminus (LTT), Mumbai to Gorakhpur. The Central Railway’s vigilance department conducted an investigation in the train where it found that a large number of people were carrying counterfeit ticket without knowing that they had purchased invalid tickets.
Over crowding in trains
As per a report published by Free Press Journal, currently more than four lakh passengers are travelling everyday from Mumbai to eastern areas including Uttar Pradesh. A senior official informed that, on an average 43 trains run from Mumbai to the eastern sector everyday. These also include many unreserved services. The total capacity of reserved train is 1800 though there are more than 2000 passengers travelling through each train.
The raid was conducted by vigilance department on October 25. The raid was conducted after the department received the complaints that the tatkaal tickets are being sold from remote location. When the passengers were asked to show the tickets in the train, the tickets they were carrying were counterfeit. The tickets were the colour print copies of the original tickets. These tickets were booked from areas of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Chhattisgarh.
Nearly Rs 1 lakh collected from fines
Further investigation revealed that many passengers had paid around Rs 5000 extra for the ticket. The passengers told the officers that they were told to pay extra money to get tatkaal ticket. The ticket fraud consisted of many irregularities. A total of 38 passengers were found carrying tickets with different name, 18 passengers with duplicate tickets, and 4 passengers carrying handwritten tickets including others. Through the investigation nearly Rs one lakh were collected by the team from fines. The investigation also revealed that most of the passengers carrying these tickets were unaware of the fact that they were carrying invalid tickets.
