Man held for fabricating letters from ministers, MPs to confirm rail tickets

A joint team of Railway Protection Force (RPF) and Bihar Police have arrested a man who allegedly fabricated letters from ministers and MPs and sent them as “recommendation” to confirm wait-listed train tickets of passengers under the special quota, for a charge, RPF officials said on Thursday.

The accused, 42-year-old Satyajit Prakash, claims to be a journalist with Lok Sabha TV, they said.

RPF commandant of Sonpur rail division, Anirudh Choudhary, said that acting on a tip-off, Muzaffarpur RPF post in-charge Manoj Kumar Yadav raided Satyajit’s house in the town on Wednesday and arrested him.

On Thursday, an RPF team from Andhra Pradesh secured a transit remand from a railway court for the custody of Satyajit, who was also wanted there in a case lodged with Marupulam police station in Visakhapatnam on June 1, 2022. The case was lodged after RPF arrested some touts, who revealed the modus operandi of confirming wait-listed tickets.

Recently, on April 10, RPF inspector R Kumar Rao of Visakhapatnam had raided Satyajit’s house in Muzaffarpur and seized more than 313 letterheads of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha members and a fax machine. Satyajit learnt about the raid and managed to flee before the raiding team arrived, the commandant said.

The officer said Satyajit managed to get bail in Marupulam case while he had filed an anticipatory bail petition in the Muzaffarpur case.

Investigations revealed that he used letter heads of union home minister, defence minister and panchayti raj minister, besides MPs Chirag Paswan, Tejaswi Surya and MK Kanimojhi.

He was using the letter heads to get the tickets confirmed and charging passengers ₹1500- ₹3000 per ticket for AC coaches.

RPF had also lodged an FIR against Satyajit at Sonpur in 2019 on the allegations of misuse of MP Rajiv Pratap Rudhi’s letter heads.