2.5 crore ‘bogus’ IDs solve case of vanishing tickets on IRCTC site

NEW DELHI: If you have been baffled by how and why railway tickets in certain trains disappear within minutes of the booking window opening even 60 days before the scheduled journey, IRCTC has detected those behind creating this artificial crisis.

Only in the past five months, it detected 2.9 lakh suspicious PNRs while analysing ticket purchases done within just five minutes after booking commenced for both general and Tatkal tickets.Top railway officials said between Janand May, they have deactivated 2.5 crore suspected user IDs for booking tickets and put 20 lakh user IDs under revalidation as a part of a special drive. “A total of 134 complaints have been registered with the national cyber crime portal and over 6,800 disposal email domains have been blocked.

This drive will be intensified further,” said an official.Disposable email addressing refers to an approach that involves using a unique email address for each contact or entity, or using it for a limited number of times or uses. The fraudsters have been resorting to these tactics to book tickets and charge more from unwary passengers.

Sources said the problem of all tickets getting booked quickly is confined to certain routes and trains.

“So, the focus is on weeding out users who are beating the system. Passengers can’t be blamed as there is a genuine shortage of confirmed tickets. So, the effort has been to increase capacity and to run more trains, particularly during peak travel seasons,” said an official.Officials claimed that IRCTC has taken “systemic measures” including engagement of leading content delivering network and anti-BOT applications – security techniques used to distinguish between genuine human users and automated bots or scripts – with cutting edge technology to ensure a smooth booking process for genuine travellers. The officials added that the railways’ ticketing and catering arm achieved its highest ever per minute booking of 31,814 tickets on May 22, 2025 at 10am.“Attempt versus booking ratio has increased from 43.1% to 62.2% between Oct 2024 and May 2025,” said an official. He added that none of the travel platforms can guarantee confirmed ticket bookings and hence people should not fall prey to them.However, certain B2C (business to consumer) sites charge a premium and offer 3X refund in specific cases.