RAILWAY SAMACHAR

Detection of a fraud in issuing of UTS suburban tickets

A team of Western Railway officials has uncovered a fraud in the issue of UTS season tickets. A modus operandi adopted by the booking clerks involved into fraud is as under,

1) A high value season ticket is generated on the UTS system but not printed on which it is supposed to be printed but printing the same on stationery after leaving two blank tickets.

2) Thereafter the first of the two tickets which have been left blank is marked as a non-issued ticket and on the second blank ticket, the non-issued ticket particulars are printed.

3) Thereafter the booking clerk generates a low value ticket and gives a printing command without really printing it on the ticket stationery.

4) In this manner the booking clerks pockets the difference of the high value ticket and the low value tickets.

5) In Railway records, the high value ticket has been made as NIT (Non-Issued Ticket) and only low value ticket is accounted for.

This being the fraud, could be detected due to the alertness exhibited by the Supervisor and the investigating team under the supervision of Shri Ajay Prakash, ACM (Mktg) at Churchgate.

The main sequence of the event is given as below,

"On 27/05/2009, information was received in UTS console that while renewing a Season Ticket on ATVM, the system was not accepting the UTS number B02R9FT0C3 bearing stock No. F19177137 for renewal of Season Ticket. The above matter was investigated in detail, wherein, finally the CRIS Engineers after verifications from Database informed that the subject ticket has been made Non-issue in the system on 26.02.2009 at 16.45 hrs. This gave a suspicion of a major fraud of high value tickets being made Non-issued in the system and subsequently mismatched ticket of the same value is issued to the passenger having mismatch numbers.

On the basis of above information, the modus-operandi of the suspect i.e Shri Rohit Kadam, ACC-Borivali was studied and a detailed data log of high value tickets issued by staff of Borivali was generated and studied thoroughly. Simultaneously a Query was generated with the help of CRIS which gave details of high value tickets made NIT and subsequently not issuing the same Season Ticket on subsequent tickets. By this process HQ team could find 11 employees having issued such type of mismatched tickets.

Further, a close watch of the functioning of such staff was through UTS Console by watching online transactions done by these staff for approximately three weeks. Meanwhile a list of such suspected tickets was generated and CRIS was asked to disable renewal through system. The list was also given to the Division there by giving instructions for collecting the mismatched Season Tickets.

On 25.05.2009 one such ticket No. F42199988 was seized by Shri Sanjay Sharma, Hd. TTE/ VR. On examination it was revealed that as per records the ticekt bearing stock number F42199988 is shown as Non-issued but actually the ticket was in possession of passenger. By this the team established the modus operandi of booking clerk and further online watch was kept on the working of Shri Devendra Shelar, Sr. ACC/ Nalla Sopara who issued the above ticket. On 26.06.2009, the employee was working on Window No. 1 at Nalla Sopara in evening shift. The employee was kept under surveillance by deploying few members of the team outside Booking office Nalla Sopara. At 19.24 the booking clerk made such transaction which was monitored online and immediately the message was passed to confiscate the ticket from the passenger. The ticket was confiscated there after the cash was tallied with DTC and an excess of Rs. 1387 was found in the Railway cash in presence of on duty Dy. SS and CBC in-charge.

Shri Rohit Kadam and Shri Devendra Shelar were called for enquiry where they have confessed to have committed this fraud. The surveillance of remaining 9 suspected staff is on and efforts are being made to collect the fraudulent mismatch ticket so that remaining 9 staff can also be taken-up.

The above operation was carried out by the team consisting of

Shri Rajesh Mathuria, DCMI/UTS, Shri Hansraj Joshi, ARS/UTS, Shri Vilas Dusane, PI/ATVM, Shri Sanjay Sharma, Hd. TTE/VR, Shri U S Mani, Sr. TTE/BA and Shri Parvez Khan, PI/ATVM under active supervision of Shri Ajay Prakash, ACM(PM)." To ensure that such frauds do not recur following steps have been initiated by Western Railway,

1) The list of suspected high value season tickets probably bearing the mismatch of stock number and computer generated ticket number has been circulated to all the Booking Offices and all the ticket checking squads to keep a close eye on such tickets.

2) Non-issue of high value ticket more than Rs. 100/- is now being done with the intervention of supervisor and they are being treated as special cancellations.

3) NIT of season tickets can only be done with supervisor ID.

4) Transaction details of the operator are to be verified by shift supervisor also personally. This way there will be two way checks, a check by the shift supervisor and verification of ROPD statement.

5) Two Booking clerks, Shri Devendra Shelar, Sr. Booking clerk at Nalla Sopara and Shri Rohit Kadam, booking clerk at Borivali have been placed under suspension.

6) Commuters are requested to tally the last four digits of the pre-printed ticket number of journey/ season ticket with four digit computer generated ticket number printed on the right hand side top corner of the ticket. If any difference is noticed in both these numbers, the same should be immediately brought to the notice of the Chief Booking Supervisor at the Booking Office or UTS console on e-mail id : wrutscentre@rediffmail.com.

7) They are also requested that in case while renewing the season tickets, Automatic Vending Machine, if the system gives the message "invalid UTS No. / please enter the correct UTS No.", the Chief Booking Supervisor at the Booking Office should be contacted.