The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) has tracked down over 2.5 crore bogus user IDs that are suspected to be a part of a massive and widespread network that rigs the ticket booking system, causing tickets shortages, especially for Tatkal bookings.
As per a Times of India report, an investigation by IRCTC revealed around 2.9 suspicious PNRs, all of which were generated within five minutes of the booking window opening. The most in-demand tickets in general quota and Tatkal tickets are booked by these suspicious IDs.
The constant issue of Tatkal quota tickets running out within seconds of the booking window opening was highlighted recently by a Bihar-based lawyer Sonu Nigam. Nigam had shared how the IRCTC app crashes, becomes unresponsive and how, within minutes, all tatkal tickets get over.
TATKAL TICKET BOOKING reality: Two screenshots, booking starts at 10am, gareeb rath had 240 seats under tatkal quota.
— Sonu Nigam (@SonuNigamSingh) May 28, 2025
10.01 am – "booking not started" pop-up appears. then app crashes and starts buffering.
10.04 am – app responds. now it shows status as waiting list 41.
even… pic.twitter.com/ib9i7Qn9mi
Hundreds of people had reacted to his post, narrating their own experiece of repeated failures to book tickets while ‘agents’ somehow always manage to book confirmed tickets.
The IRCTC had reportedly launched a cleanup drive between January to May 2025, where they identified suspicious and bogus accounts. IRCTC has reportedly deleted thousands of suspicious accounts, put around 20 lakh accounts under review and flagged over 6800 disposable email domains that were used to open the suspicious user accounts on the platform.
IRCTC has also filed over 134 complaints with the National Cyber Crime Portal.
