A fake railway ticket racket has come under the scanner after Western Railway caught a passenger travelling on an AC suburban local train with a counterfeit UTS mobile ticket, NDTV reported.
The passenger was allegedly using a fraudulent mobile application that generated a fake ticket by replicating the details of a genuine UTS ticket.
According to NDTV, the forged ticket was detected during a routine ticket checking drive conducted by Arvind Singh, Chief Commercial Ticket Checker of the Mumbai Central Division.
The passenger who was travelling with his wife and son came under suspicion when he presented what appeared to be a return e-ticket between Virar and Churchgate on a mobile application. Ticket checking staff became suspicious because the application closely resembled the RailOne app but displayed irregularities that prompted further verification, Mid-Day reported.
The Free Press Journal reported that during verification, railway officials found that the UTS number shown on the ticket did not correspond to the journey being undertaken. The UTS number actually belonged to an older second class ticket rather than the AC local ticket being displayed by the passenger.
NDTV reported that the passenger told railway authorities that he had downloaded the counterfeit application, from which he generated the fake ticket, through a link shared on YouTube.
An FIR has been registered at the Mumbai Central Police Station under relevant provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita in connection with the incident.
Following the incident, railway officials have advised passengers to use only official Indian Railways ticketing platforms, including UTS and RailOne, and to avoid downloading lookalike applications from unverified sources.
The incident has also prompted railway authorities to strengthen vigilance during ticket inspections, particularly on Mumbai's AC local services, where digital ticket fraud has emerged as a growing concern.
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