Title - Two students among six held for acting as touts for tatkal booking

Six persons, including two engineering students in the city were arrested on charges of acting as touts for booking tatkal tickets at the Computerised Passenger Reservation Centre in Mambalam on Friday. Based on their confession, a special team of Railway Protection Force (RPF) raided a travel agency at West Mambalam, which engaged the students for booking tatkal tickets.“Each student was paid `100 to work as touts to book tatkal tickets. The students had accepted to take up the job for pocket money for the last one week,” an RPF official at Mambalam railway station said. The arrested were identified as N Manikandan, E S Manikandan, Santosh, Deepak and R Mohan from West Mambalam and Vigesh belonging to Ashok Nagar in the neighbourhood.Of the six, two were engineering students, two arts students, one had just completed class XII and one was an employee of a travel agency on West Mambalam’s Lake View Road, who was secured during the search on Thursday. Explaining their modus operandi, RPF sources said the travel agency had provided photocopies of ID proofs of passengers to the students for booking tatkal tickets. Though commuters can send representatives to book tatkal tickets, it becomes an offence if the representative does it for monetary benefits.

“The travel agency was paying the students Rs 100 for every tatkal ticket booked, which is an offence under the Railway Act. The proprietor of the travel agency Kannan and his associate Suresh are absconding,” a RPF officer said.

All the arrested persons were booked under Section 143(1) (a) and (b) of Railway Act (Purchases or sells or attempts to purchase or sell tickets with a view to carrying on any such business either by himself or by any other person). They were remanded to Puzhal and Saidapet prisons on Friday.