Tatkal in 60 seconds: Telegram racket sells Aadhaar IDs after railway announcement

Tatkal in 60 seconds: Telegram racket sells Aadhaar IDs after railway announcement 

Unauthorised ticketing platforms claim to book Tatkal tickets in 60 seconds using bots and Aadhaar-verified IRCTC accounts, risking user data. Listen to Story

The Ministry of Railways has mandated that tickets under the Tatkal scheme can be booked through IRCTC.

Aakash Sharma

Khooshi Sonkar New Delhi,UPDATED: Jul 3, 2025 22:15 IST 

Posted By: Akshat Trivedi 

Tatkal tickets - meant for last-minute travel and released 24-hours before departure- are often bought within seconds by bots or agents, leaving genuine travellers stranded.

A network of more than 40 groups active on Telegram and WhatsApp has been identified by India Today’s OSINT team. But it represents just a fraction of the larger online black market for e-ticketing, where thousands of agents appear to be active—and business continues to boom, despite government regulation.

The Ministry of Railways has mandated that tickets under the Tatkal scheme can be booked through the Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) website or app only by Aadhaar-authenticated users starting July 1.

Soon after the announcement, the e-ticketing racket on social media channels began peddling Aadhaar-verified IRCTC IDs and OTPs to both agents and buyers.

RACKET UNCOVERED Not just agents, the e-ticketing rackets are rife with tech geeks and fake service providers who claim to exploit alleged loopholes in the IRCTC system, operating through shady Telegram and WhatsApp accounts.

To mask their identities, the admins use international phone numbers.

The Aadhar-authenticated IRCTC user IDs are openly sold for just Rs. 360 each, as per posts seen by India Today. These accounts are allegedly used to generate OTPs for booking Tatkal tickets. But the process isn’t manual—agents claim to use bots or automated browser extensions to speed up bookings and overwhelm the system for genuine users.

MODUS OPERANDI India Today closely observed activity inside one of the racket’s Telegram groups, “Fast Tatkal Software,” for over three months to understand their ticketing operations.

The racket operators or the technical masterminds behind the illicit network are the ones claiming to sell bots to agents. The agents are asked to install these bots in their browsers and use autofill features to complete bookings quickly, gaining an advantage over genuine users who struggle with slow-loading pages and failed transactions.

One video shared by an operator makes the picture clearer.

The bots allegedly autofill IRCTC login credentials, train details, passenger information, and payment data. The entire process is automated and “guaranteed” to secure confirmed tickets in less than a minute.

A conversation in the channel reveals the tech expert guiding agents to evade IRCTC’s AI algorithm, which counters bot activity by blocking suspicious IPs. The fraudsters dodge these blocks by using Virtual Private Servers (VPS) to mask their IP addresses.

Some operators even claim to be developing features to complete

India Today also discovered that the racket admins operate full-fledged websites selling bots like Dragon, JETX, Ocean, Black Turbo, and Formula One—marketed for “instant Tatkal bookings” and priced between Rs 999 and Rs 5,000. After purchase, users are guided through Telegram channels on how to use them.

These bots are not just used to book tickets but steal information from users.

Malware analysis of the bot file named WinZip, downloaded as an APK, was conducted using the malware scanner site VirusTotal. The analysis revealed it to be Trojan - a malware designed to steal user information.

On June 04, the Ministry of Railway said in a press release that during the first five minutes of Tatkal booking, “the bot traffic accounts for up to 50 per cent of overall login attempts.”

The deployment of the anti-bot system by IRCTC led to the suspension of over 2.5 crore fake user IDs, the Ministry added. Also, agent bookings are now banned during the first 30 minutes of Tatkal ticket opening for both AC and non-AC categories.

NEWS TODAY 03.07.2025

 

Ragging at AIIMS Mangalagiri: 13 med students face action

Ragging at AIIMS Mangalagiri: 13 med students face action

SriKrishna.Kummara@timesofindia.com 03.07.2025

Vijayawada : Probing the alleged ragging incident involving a first year MBBS student at AIIMS Mangalagiri, the college probe committee found 13 out of 15 students guilty and took action against them. The college management rusticated six students for two semesters (one year), three students for three semesters (1.5 years), and four students for one semester (six months). 

In addition, a fine of ₹25,000 was imposed on each student, and they were permanently debarred from staying in the main hostel campus for the entire duration of the course. No action was initiated against two students as the ragging charges against them were found untrue in the probe report, officials said. 

“The severity of the punishment awarded to the students is based on the probe report findings submitted by the anti-ragging committee, which probed into the ragging incident against a first year MBBS hostel inmate on June 22,” AIIMS Mangalagiri spokesperson Vamsi Krishna Reddy said. 

He further stated that the suspended students will not be allowed to take part in any kind of non-academic activities such as cultural, sports, and other events . According to the sources, the 13 suspended students verbally abused the victim studying in first year MBBS on June 22 at the hostel campus, following which the victim inflicted a knife cut on his hand. After the victim lodged a complaint via email to the college management on June 23, the college management ordered a probe against 15 students, including the son of the dean (academics) of AIIMS Mangalagiri.

NEWS TODAY 03.07.2025

 

HC: Earn more to pay maintenance to wife

HC: Earn more to pay maintenance to wife 

Says Low Income No Shield Against Responsibilities 

Ajay.Sura@timesofindia.com 03.07.2025

Chandigarh : The Punjab and Haryana high court has ruled that a man must strive to earn more to pay maintenance to his wife, calling lack of sufficient income no shield against responsibility and holding that other liabilities cannot be a ground for denial of legally-entitled maintenance to his wife and children. “In case the petitioner is not able to earn the aforesaid amount, it is rather his duty to earn more, and after earning more, he has to maintain his children and wife under the provisions of law. 

Therefore, an argument raised by the petitioner with regard to the other liabilities that he is not able to pay the aforesaid amount cannot be accepted and is hereby rejected,” the high court has held. Justice Jasgurpreet Singh Puri of the high court passed the orders on a plea filed by a resident of Haryana’s Rewari district. He challenged the order dated Feb 27 passed by additional principal judge, family court, Rewari, directing him to pay Rs 24,700 per month as interim maintenance to his wife and two children. 

The couple were married on Feb 22, 2014. The petitioner, a senior nurse in SMS Hospital, Jaipur, with a monthly income of Rs 57,606, informed the court that his wife withdrew has been living separately for around five years. He contended that he is not able to pay the maintenance, almost half of his monthly salary, as he also has to take care of his ailing mother and has liabilities like EMIs. He pleaded that the family court order be set aside or, in the alternative, the interim maintenance granted be reduced.

 The court held that the Rs 24,700 per month maintenance “cannot be said to be on the higher side by any stretch of imagination considering the inflationary tendencies and costs in ratio as of today”. 

“This court does not find any illegality or perversity in the impugned order and is also of the considered view that the amount of Rs 24,700 per month to the respondents is neither excessive nor erroneous,” the court held in its order released recently

NMC stalls on making med college assessments public

NMC stalls on making med college assessments public 

File Is Still Under Process 

Rema.Nagarajan@timesofindia.com 03.07.2025

Nine months after the National Medical Commission (NMC) decided to seek legal opinion on whether the assessment forms of medical colleges can be made public, the matter remains unresolved as NMC claimed, in response to an RTI query, that the file is still “under process”. As a result, MBBS aspirants are forced to choose medical colleges without access to details of the assessment of the infrastructure and faculty available in a college. The chief information commissioner had ordered the NMC several times in 2024 to make assessment reports public, stating that “disclosing these assessment reports is essential for the aspiring medical students seeking admission”. 

Neither reports of inspection of medical colleges nor standard assessment forms (SAF) are being made public by the NMC. The SAF is mandatory and is meant as an annual self-declaration by a medical college giving information about infrastructure, faculty, patient load, academic activities and so on. In the NMC meeting held on Sept 23, 2024, “the commission opined that the SAF form need not be in public domain” and instructed its Medical Assessment and Rating Board to take further action. 

However, according to the minutes of the meeting obtained through RTI, V Hekali Zhimomi, an additional secretary in the health ministry, suggested that an opinion should be obtained from the department of legal affairs. 

When RTI activist Dr KV Babu asked about the status of the SAF disclosure issue, the NMC responded that “file for seeking legal opinion on the matter of SAF disclosure is under process and hence the information in this regard is not available”. 

NMC had brought in the Aadhaar-Enabled Biometric Attendance System in Aug 2018, but found that people were using silicon thumb imprints to manipulate the system. To counter this, the NMC mandated face-based Aadhaar authentication for faculty attendance in medical colleges from April this year. However, the NMC seems reluctant to adopt the simplest system of making colleges’ selfdeclarations public so that students and public could verify if the faculty, infrastructure and patient load being claimed in the declaration were indeed available. 

NMC distances itself from assessors amid CBI crackdown on bribes for +ve rating to colleges The National Medical Commission (NMC) on Wednesday sought to distance itself from assessors engaged by it to conduct inspections in medical institutions on its behalf amid CBI raids to nab people involved in racket to give favourable assessment reports in exchange for bribes, reports Durgesh Nandan Jha . Inspection of medical colleges is undertaken by the NMC on a periodic basis to assess whether they meet the minimum essential standards specified by the Under-Graduate Medical Education Board or the Post-Graduate Medical Education Board, as the case may be. Inspections are also undertaken before allowing medical institutions to increase seats. In May, the CBIarrested a senior doctor working as assessor with the NMC immediately after he received a bribe of Rs 10 lakh allegedly in exchange for a positive assessment report linked to a private medical college in Karnataka. The NMC, in a statement issued on Wednesday, said they have decided to blacklist the said assessor, pending investigation and final verdict in the matter.

Human calculator: 13-year-old prodigy from Vadodara rules numbers game

Human calculator: 13-year-old prodigy from Vadodara rules numbers game

 Prashant.Rupera@timesofindia.com 03.07.2025

Vadodara : While most teenagers are still learning basic algebra, 13-year-old Ayan Mohsin Vahora from Anand is busy performing complex mental calculations faster than a calculator — and even determining the day of the week for dates from centuries ago. Whether it’s memorizing 500 random digits in under 30 minutes or solving intricate equations in seconds, Ayan’s brain seems wired for numbers. 

His extraordinary talent recently earned him the Champion of Champions (COC) title at the 20th UCMAS Mental Maths State-Level Competition held in Gujarat. Competing in the grand level— the most advanced and demanding category — Ayan not only took home the coveted trophy but also won a cash prize of Rs 11,000. “This achievement is a dream come true for us,” said Dr Mohsin Vahora, Ayan’s father and a veterinary doctor at Amul Dairy. 

The Universal Concepts in Mental Arithmetic System (UCMAS) is a global child development programme that uses abacus-based visual arithmetic to enhance cognitive skills in children aged 4 to 13. It sharpens memory, concentration, and logical thinking — alongside improving mathematical ability. “At the state-level competition, the grand level is the toughest category,” explained Dr Vahora. “Participants are given just eight minutes to solve a maximum number of problems involving addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and square roots — sometimes with up to six-digit numbers and decimals.” Ayan’s top score in this gruelling challenge earned him the COC title — granted to the highest scorer across the state. But his success doesn’t stop there. Ayan has bagged multiple UCMAS titles and participated in several national and international contests. 

In Dec last year, he competed in an international mental maths championship in New Delhi, featuring 6,000 students from more than 30 countries — where he secured the second runner-up position. Back home, the young prodigy continues to set new challenges for himself. In one recent feat, he multiplied a 50digit random number by a single digit in under two and a half minutes — all in his head