Kochi: Post demonetisation, people are pulling out all tricks in their bag to save their stash! When a man turned up at the Ernakulam North station on Wednesday morning and booked six second AC waiting list tickets from Ernakulam to Mumbai CST for Rs 15,240, the officials at the counter found nothing unusual.
However, when an attempt was made to book another six more waiting list tickets in the Ernakulam-Delhi sector for Rs 20,400 using the same ID card, the officials smelt a rat, but doled out the same. But when he turned up the third time, the staff at the ticket counter refused initially and asked him to wait.
However, he took back the application form. “Legally we can’t deny him tickets. He was handing over all big notes of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500. We got suspicious since the handwriting in the application form was the same, though another person had turned up the second time,” sources said.
The man then went to the South station and made a similar attempt, but was sent back following an alert by the North station staff. “But post noon when the counter staff changed, he again turned up before the counter. Since the alert was in place, we could identify him. This time we asked him to hand over PAN card copy and Know Your Customer (KYC) form similar to that demanded by banks. He fled in no time,” they said.
The officers suspect that the ploy was to “invest” the big denomination notes in the form of rail tickets and cancel them a few days later. “Since he was booking waiting list tickets, which have slim chances to get confirmed, the cancellation charges are less. This case Rs 120 per head,” the sources said.
The railway officials said many more instances were there across the railway stations when people book waiting list tickets.
