NE NEWS SERVICE
NEW DELHI, SEPT 8
The Railway Protection Force (RPF) has disrupted the use of illegal software ”Real Mango” for cornering confirmed train reservation during the coronavirus pandemic and made 50 arrests in an investigation spanning West Bengal, Assam, Bihar, and Gujarat, RPF DG Arun Kumar said Tuesday.
In the course of the systematic unravelling of the working of the illegal software, it has been found that it bypasses captcha, synchronises bank OTP with the help of a mobile app and feeds it to the requisite form to book tickets automatically. It also auto-fills the passenger and payment details in the forms, he said.
“The software logs in to the IRCTC website through multiple IRCTC IDs. The illegal software is sold through a five-tiered structure with the system admin receiving payment in bitcoins,” the Director-General, Railway Protection Force (RPF), said at a press briefing.
Field units of RPF have been able to apprehend 50 people so far, including the system developer who was the kingpin and key managers involved in the operation of the illegal software, and block live tickets worth more than Rs 5 lakhs, he said.
“Five key operatives of the illegal software have been arrested from West Bengal. The software has now been fully decimated,” Kumar said.
The first red flag was when it was discovered that the developer of the software used YouTube to advertise his product and an analysis of the data of the popular video-sharing platform led to key members of the gang.
Kumar said in view of the apprehension of an increase in touting activity after the restart of the passenger services, the drive against touts was intensified by the force.
“Operation of an illegal software called ”Rare Mango” (whose name was later changed to ”Real Mango”) was revealed on August 9 during action against touts by the field units of RPF,” said.
“RPF units of North Central Railway (NCR), Eastern Railway (ER), and Western Railway (WR) apprehended some suspects and initiated the process of understanding and unravelling the operation of RareMango/Real Mango software,” he said.
Various operations by the RPF during the coronavirus pandemic have led to the arrest of 994 touts and advance tickets worth Rs 87.70 crore have been blocked. It has also disrupted much illegal software like ANMS/ Red Mirchi/Black TS, TikTok, I-Ball, Red Bull, MAC, N-GET, Cycle, Star-V2 etc.
The information supplied by RPF helped CRIS/IRCTC to strengthen security features in the PRS system due to which the software stopped functioning at that time, the RPF DG said.
