Rab today claimed to have busted a train ticket black marketing syndicate and arrested nine of its members.
The arrestees include four employees of shohoz.com, which is the ticket-selling partner of Bangladesh Railway.
The arrestees are Mizan Dhali, 48, the alleged kingpin of the syndicate; his nephew Sohel Dhali, 30; Md Sumon, 39; Jahangir Alam, 49; Shahjalal Hossain, 42; Md Rasel, 24; Joynal Abedin, 46; Sabur Hawlader, 40; and Newton Biswas, 40.
Of them, Newton was the server operator of Shohoz.com at Kamalapur Railway Station and Sabuj was its station representative.
The Rab team with the help of members of National Security Intelligence arrested them from different areas last night, said Khandker Al Moin, Rab's Legal and Media Wing director, during a press briefing at Rab media centre today.
The arrestees confessed to their wrongdoing. They admitted to selling those tickets at two to three times higher than the actual price, he said.
Newton used to provide information, including the precise timing of ticket sales opening, to Mizan and Sohel.
Mizan and Sohel had the passwords to a lot of users' accounts with which they booked tickets online and from ticket counters, the Rab official said.
Several agents across the country used to place orders for tickets to Mizan and Sohel. After collecting the tickets, Mizan and Sohel used to send soft copies of the tickets to the agents through messenger or WhatsApp, the Rab official said.
Moin said that Mizan, who had been working with Daffodil, Cnsbd, and Shohoz since 2003, developed strong relationships with agents and ticket counters at various railway stations nationwide. This enabled him to form the syndicate.
In 2003, Mizan joined as an office attendant of Daffodil. As the Bangladesh Railway signed a contract with CNS.bd , he was appointed there as an experienced worker. In 2020, when the contract was given to Shohoz.com, Mizan moved there, Moin added. Daffodil, Cnsbd are former ticket-selling partners of Bangladesh Railway.
This gang used to black market around 500 tickets daily, he added.
The agents received 50 percent of the profit, while Mizan shared the remaining portion with his syndicate members, which included corrupt employees of Shohoz.com.
We have information on transactions worth Tk one crore in various mobile banking accounts of the syndicate, he added.
During interrogation, it was revealed that Mizan and Sohel in association with Shohoz.com's employees and ticket countermen used to sell around 2,000-3,000 railway tickets through the black market during every Eid season.
The syndicate was eyeing a big profit targeting the upcoming Eid-ul-Fitr, Rab said.
