A 40-year-old man impersonating a train Ticket Checker (TC) was arrested after he was found collecting "fines" from passengers on board the Mumbai-Gorakhpur Kushinagar Express, the Government Railway Police (GRP) said on Thursday, May 22. The accused, Ramprakash Ramjeevan Mandal, a resident of Bihar, was arrested on May 21 following a complaint lodged by a Chief Ticket Checker, said senior inspector Pandhari Kande of the Kalyan GRP in Thane district.
Also Read | Uttar Pradesh: PM Modi inaugurates 19 redeveloped railway stations under ABSS.
By the time Mandal was caught, he had collected "fines" amounting to Rs 17,390 from unsuspecting passengers on the Gorakhpur-bound train, he said. "The complaint was filed by the Chief Ticket Checker who, along with other staff and Railway Protection Force (RPF) personnel in plainclothes, was on duty to check the tickets of passengers on the train. This routine check was being conducted on the stretch between Lokmanya Tilak Terminus in Mumbai and Igatpuri in the Nashik district of Maharashtra.
The accused was arrested shortly after the train departed from Kalyan. "After the train left Kalyan station at around 2.15 am, the official team spotted the accused in full TC uniform, complete with a batch and a receipt book. He was actively posing as a TC and was observed checking tickets of passengers," Kande said.
"An FIR has been registered in this matter at the Kalyan GRP station under Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) sections related with fraudulent intent, forgery, using a forged document or electronic record as genuine," he said.