The Railway Security Force (RPF) personnel of South Western Railway (SWR) has busted a cross-border criminal gang that was involved in using an illegal software for bypassing the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) and Bank security systems for booking tatkal tickets throughout India. After nearly one year of investigation and several raids conducted throughout India, over 100 panel developers and software sellers were arrested.
In September 2019, intelligence agencies had alerted the use of illegal software for booking tickets and arrested one criminal after the RPF personnel carried out an investigation into the matter. The arrested criminal revealed details about the illegal software business that would allow anyone to directly book tickets by unfair means and make the passengers pay four to five times more than the actual ticket fare.
“The criminals fled Bengaluru and was on the run from October 2019. In January 2020, his whereabouts were tracked to Kenderpara in Odisha, where he was arrested and brought to Bengaluru for further investigation by the Bangalore RPF team,” said South Western Railway in a press release on Tuesday. SWR is headquartered in Karnataka’s Hubballi.
“During the interrogation, it was understood that he was using a Pakistan-based software for a high-level hacking of Linux-based systems used by ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation), the Railways, other government organisations, 3,000 bank account details as well as Bitcoins and other cryptocurrency links,” the statement read.
The SWR said that a black market of 25,000 hackers and touts with high commands in India and abroad were uncovered following the interrogation. The black money generated from the illegal activity amounted to ‘hundreds of crores’, which were also found to be linked with various other anti-national and criminal activities in and around India and abroad.
The press release also stated that there were around 25,000 hackers in India, functioning as a cadre-based hierarchy, where touts would generate demand and bring passengers to sellers who use the software to compromise the IRCTC booking system. “These sellers, in turn, report to panel developers, who would give them access to the software for monthly charges. These panel developers would report to financial and technical administration, whose main job is to maintain the servers hosted in foreign countries. The illegal money generated is suspected to be used in terror funding, making illegal documents for hostile foreign nations, money laundering through cryptocurrency etc,” it read.
Following the raid, the software codes were seized and destroyed.
“In view of their persistent work to apprehend the touts, the Director-General of RPF awarded a commendation certificate to Principal Chief Security Commissioner of SWR and Divisional Security Commissioner, Bengaluru and the team for unearthing the illegal software racket and their modus operandi,” said the South Western Railway.
The case will now be investigated by the Central Bureau of Intelligence (CBI) as it has “larger international security ramifications”.