Noida: BTech student held for selling tatkal tickets in black

A 22-year-old BTech student was arrested by the Railway Protection Force (RPF) on Friday in Noida for hacking the IRCTC website and selling tatkal tickets to Indian Railways passengers in black, police said, adding that he earned nearly ₹15 Lakhs in the past two years by selling tickets illegally.

The suspect, identified as Nayan Alam, 22, resides in Sarfabad, Sector 73, and is a final-year B-Tech computer science student at a private college in Greater Noida.

According to officials, the police became aware of the situation on July 26 when the cybercrime wing of Prayagraj alerted RPF Dadri about several tatkal tickets being booked in a single day using a suspected IP Address and mobile number linked to Noida.

SK Verma, the station house officer at Dadri Railway, said, “Based on the tip-off received from the cyber wing, we tracked down and arrested the suspect with the help of technical analysis.”

“Alam allegedly created 56 fake IRCTC IDs using Temp mail software and operated a private group on the social media platform Telegram, where people from all over India contacted him to buy tatkal tickets in emergencies. He charged ten times the actual ticket price if the desired route was busy,” SHO Verma added.

SHO Verma also added that Alam’s booked ticket history contained around 31 tatkal tickets for upcoming dates, valued at ₹72,000. It was estimated that he had earned close to ₹15 Lakhs in the past two years through selling railway tickets on the black market, police said.

According to SHO Verma, Alam was using the illegal software “Nexus,” which enabled him to book six tatkal tickets in a single click after hacking into the IRCTC website.

“The accused possessed two mobile numbers, a computer, and a mobile phone, all of which were seized,” said SHO Verma. He further added that Alam was booked under Section 143 (Penalty for unauthorized carrying on of the business of procuring and supplying railway tickets) of the Railway Act at Dadri police station on Friday.