Sambalpur: Railway Protection Force (RPF) police Thursday arrested two persons including a travel agency proprietor on charge of large scale irregularities in e-ticket booking for trains.
Pawan Kakkar, proprietor of Barun Travels in Gujarati Colony under Town police limits and his employee Manish Srivastav were produced in court which remanded them in judicial custody. Four computer CPUs, a ticket book, advertisement receipts, a diary and Rs 82,300 were seized from his possession.
A case under Section-143 of the Railway Act was registered in this connection and further investigations are on. This was stated here by Prabin Kumar, IIC of RPF police station.
Kakkar had his travel agency near the Ashapali school and received the licence from the Railways for e-booking of train tickets, He had also facilities for booking of flight tickets and hotel reservations.
The RPF police in Bhubaneswar received a complaint that he charged Rs 200 extra for Tatkal tickets while the extra fee was Rs 100 for general reservation tickets.
Sambalpur RPF police registered a case November 20, 2015 on its own and started a probe in the matter. However, the RPF failed to gather evidence to nail Kakkar in the case.
Two years later, RPF police found involvement of middlemen in e-ticket booking.
Accordingly, the Town and RPF police jointly conducted a raid on the travel agency office and seized four CPUs, Rs 82,300 and other incriminating materials and arrested the two.
The duo was brought over to the police station and questioned. The two admitted to their guilt and revealed that that they used book e-tickets through 28 fake e-mail IDs. The two through fraudulent methods have transacted business over Rs 1 crore.
Locals alleged that such incidents happen in various parts of the district. They demanded a high-level probe to unravel the truth. PNN
