BENGALURU: The Karnataka High Court has quashed the proceedings initiated by the Railway Protection Force against Gaurav Dahake from Aurangabad, an IIT graduate, who set up a startup a few years ago to help people book Tatkal tickets within 40 seconds.
The court noted that the petitioner neither procured nor supplied tickets. All that he did was create an extension to the IRCTC website, which speeded up the process of getting Tatkal tickets confirmed.
The process is said to have reduced the 7-minute confirmation time to just 40 seconds. It would benefit the public. Unless the ingredients of Section 143 are met, the crime itself could not have been registered, Justice M Nagaprasanna said.
The petitioner set up buyhatke.com to help people save money during online transactions. In August 2017, he developed TatkalForSure software, which auto-fills the details of travellers.
All was well for three years when the petitioner was doing it for free. He began to charge Rs 30 per ticket in February 2020, following which a case was registered.