Fifty people have been arrested in a nationwide crackdown on unauthorized Indian Railways ticket booking using software called Real Mango.
The Railway Protection Force (RPF) had recently intensified its surveillance expecting an increase in activity of touts after resumption of passenger services on Indian Railways.
In one such raid early August, a software then known as Rare Mango was unearthed by the field units of RPF from North Central, Eastern and Western Railway zones.
The software was found to be bypassing captchas on the IRCTC website and auto-filling passenger details to be able to book tickets, giving the user an advantage over genuine passengers.
The software is said to use multiple IRCTC IDs for the purpose and the admin received bitcoins as payments, says a statement from the RPF.
The force has nabbed 50 people said to be involved in the operation. Tickets worth over 5 lakh rupees have been blocked as a result of the arrests.
Previously, investigation work by the RPF has also disrupted the use of several such software applications that booked tickets in an authorized fashion. Some of these applications had names like ANMS/ Red Mirchi/Black TS, TikTok, I-Ball, Red Bull, MAC, N-GET, Cycle, Star-V2.
These operations had helped arrest 102 criminals between December 2019 and March 2020.