CHENNAI: Sleuths of the Central Bureau of Investigation raided a travel agency in Anna Nagar Plaza on Thursday in connection with the nation-wide railway reservation racket.
The search was conducted jointly by the CBI’s anti-corruption bureau officials from Chennai and Bangalore. A spokesman for the investigating agency said Chennai was among the 11 locations where CBI conducted the raid. Last night, the attempt to raid the agency was obstructed.
The raid was conducted around 11.30 am and lasted for nearly two hours.
The raid followed allegations that some people had conspired to interfere in the IRCTC booking system by installing a software in the computer systems at various offices of travel agents, said the spokesman. The software enabled a travel agent to book six separate tickets (a maximum of 36 passengers) at one-go. Usually, in normal course, a person or agent can book only one ticket with a maximum of six passengers at a time. Thus cornering the tickets, the agents made a windfall profit by selling them for a premium.
During the raid in Chennai, laptops as well as hard discs and incriminating documents were reportedly seized. “The equipment were allegedly used for creation of multiple IRCTC windows for generating multiple tickets at a time by installing a software called ‘New Trained Software’, for capturing the ticket data,” the CBI spokesman said.
Meanwhile, CBI sources said a case has been registered against an Assistant Manager of IRCTC, New Delhi and several others in this connection.