He was asked to take the pass out of the plastic cover and on minutely checking it with the UTS Centre at Churchgate, it was found to be fake. On further questioning, the passenger confessed that he had bought the said pass from a mobile recharge stall from Virar West. Subsequently, he was handed over to the railway police at Andheri and charged with forgery and cheating under various sections of the IPC.

Ticketless travellers

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Western Railway has so far netted as much as Rs 135.58 crore from ticketless travellers between April and December 2022. To prevent unauthorised entry in AC local trains, frequent surprise ticket checking drives have been carried out and more than 31,500 unauthorised passengers have been penalised since April 2022.

“Zahid K Qureshi, deputy chief ticket inspector, Mumbai, has collected the highest ever ticket checking fines amounting to over Rs 1 crore from 11,684 people travelling without tickets and 1,432 irregular travellers in 2022. WR appreciates the hard work he has put in his 26 years of service and his commendable devotion to work. It is noteworthy that Qureshi collected fines to the tune of Rs 21.41 lakh in the month of October 2022, which is a record for the highest monthly fines,” Western Railway Chief Public Relations Officer Sumit Thakur said.

He added, “During December 2022, an amount of Rs 9.87 crore was recovered through detection of 1.58 lakh ticketless/irregular passengers, including unbooked luggage cases. It is pertinent to mention that during the period from April to December 2022, a total 20.12 lakh ticketless/irregular passengers and unbooked luggage cases were detected, as against 11.76 lakh cases detected during the corresponding period last year, which is an increase of over 71.10 per cent. A fine of Rs 135.58 crore was recovered from these passengers which is an increase of 99.15 per cent over the corresponding period of last year, which was Rs 68.08 crore.”

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1 crore AC passengers on CR

New Year’s Eve brought cheers to Central Railway as the AC local ridership crossed 1 crore (10,000,664) during the period from April to December 2022. Presently, CR runs 56 AC services on its suburban section between Mumbai CSMT–Kalyan/Badlapur/Titwala. 

AC local trains on CR have been popular, but protests and political intervention led to curtailment of services and new trips are not being introduced despite demand. On WR, the AC trains reached the 1 crore passenger milestone in October 2022.