8 ms·

Indian developer jailed for making unauthorized train ticket booking app

165 points by jaikant77 6y ago

namdnay 6y ago
I can't figure out if it was just "pasting fields into the UI" as they say (in which case how were they caught with traffic monitoring???) or if it was a screen scraper In any case, he clearly wasn't collecting ticket payments on behalf of the train company, so I don't see how they could accuse him of acting as an unauthorised agent
- kumarvvr 6y ago
  When you signup for an account for the Indian railways, you are explicitly prohibited from making money off of the service in any form. This is because there is a black market for railway tickets, where agents charge a high free for booking tickets online for many illetrate buyers, especially in rural areas.
ch_123 6y ago
The headline has been editorialized. While I don't agree with what the authorities did here, and believe the developer was acting in good faith, the developer created an app for buying railway tickets which charged a small fee for the tickets - the issue was that he was arrested for making money off ticket sales, as opposed to "automating forms on a website"
- moh_maya 6y ago
  Yep. He circumvented rate-limiters that ensured that you couldn't game the booking system. The regulations very clearly prohibit this to ensure fair access. Now, one can absolutely argue about whether this form of rate limiting is the right approach, but to circumvent something that is clearly prohibited & charge money to do that is illegal. This does not mean that I think the current system is perfect OR that there aren't other players who also have backdoors into the process; just that the action is not as egregious as 'BUREAUCRATS STIFILING INNOVATION'. There is more nuance needed here [1]. "According to the sources, the apps enabled users to book Tatkal tickets bypassing security checks on the IRCTC portal. His mobile applications were unauthorized and had features to bypasses Completely Automated Public Turing Test (CAPTCHA), a security measure that users must fill in while logging in to IRCTC. As per reports the apps also bypassed other security measures installed by the IRCTC." ... "However, railway officials clarified Yuvrajaa bypassed the railway system and made money illegally which is a crime. He wasn’t event an authorized agent registered with IRCTC to book tickets. RPF has registered a case under section 143 (2) of the Railways Act (penalty for unauthorised carrying on of the business of procuring and supplying of railway tickets). Developing an unauthorised software bypassing e-ticketing system is an offence. Such applications defeated the purpose of having a first-come-first-serve system and benefit only a few who use the software." This govt., like most Indian govts, has a stupidly archaic & top-down / low-trust / risk-averse / bean-counter approach to innovation and transparency (case in point, the Covid tracking app Arogya Setu's sordid development & transparency issues), but this specific incident isn't the right stick, IMO. :) [1] https://www.the420.in/conman-or-genius-arrest-of-iit-kharagpur-student-who-made-faster-rail-ticket-booking-app-than-irctc-sparks-debate/ https://www.the420.in/conman-or-genius-arrest-of-iit-kharagp...
  - yitchelle 6y ago
    You see similar software used in Auction sites such as eBay and the likes. Are this type of software also banned in India?
    - moh_maya 6y ago
      AFAIK, for railways ticket bookings, yes; not banned but illegal. However, it's common knowledge that they exist and are used.
      - jaikant77 6y ago
        India has a strong legal framework and unfortunately very poor implementation (the arrest is an example of poor implementation/bullying by the state). When you say illegal, you should be able to specify the law under which it is illegal. Broadly classifying anything not convenient to the state as illegal does not stand ground, AFAIK there is no law which prohibits automation of forms on any website?
        ch_123 6y ago
        You're attacking a strawman here. The issue was that he was making a profit by reselling tickets, not by automating filling forms in a website. The mechanism is not particularly relevant. By analogy, it is legal to park my car in my own garden, but not legal to park it in my neighbour's garden. If I were to do that, I might expect to be punished for "parking my car".
        jkoudys 6y ago
        You start by accusing him of using a strawman, then using an analogy which doesn't even remotely apply. It's closer to your neighbour selling you the rights to park in their garden, then you selling those rights to someone else. Far from a criminal, arrestable offence, so their point on the broad-brush of being "illegal" stands. Even my closer analogy is still pretty far off and it's much more innocent. Maybe closer to charging a fee to use a very tricky to figure out parking meter.
- jaikant77 6y ago
  Yes. thats because technically thats what he seems to have done. Since tatkal tickets are limited in number, by prefilling and automating the forms he effectively helps his clients jump the queue. This is a clear hack, but I find it irrational to arrest a person because the website is suboptimal and cannot prevent his hack from running. This similar to what Github did when they pulled down youtube-dl, bully your way to compliance.
  - dmurray 6y ago
    Github wasn't bullying anyone in the youtube-dl saga. Their crime was that they didn't stand up for their user.
- Karishma1234 6y ago
  Some context here: Indian railways website is very slow and pathetic (so bad that there are lengthy discussion on HN about it. search for IRCTC). Given the shortage of tickets thousands of people try to book tickets at 7am when the window to book a certain class of tickets call `Tatkal` opens. Thousands of people are trying to book the exact same tickets from say 7am and by 7:10 am all tickets get sold out. Now, if you could prefill all the forms and just press submit you might be able to buy the tickets before others. Railways website specifically tries to not allow any kind of pre-filling. The app merely bypasses that restriction. (I have written scripts in past to do just that when I lived there). Railways is a classic colonial government system and operates pretty much as if India is still a British colony. They have their own police force called RPF which arrested the boy under Railways act 1989 for “unauthorised business of procuring and supplying railway tickets” which the boy did not do at all. Not to mention, the railways form has a captcha so it was not even a programmatic submission. There are railways mafias in India who buy tickets by bribing railways staff and I suspect these people are responsible for getting this boy jailed as his solution helped more genuine passengers to book their tickets by undercutting the "agents". It remains to be seen how the courts apply the standard here but it will probably take around 10-15 years for the courts to come to a verdict. Personal Rant: When I was in India, I had the misfortune of relying on Indian railways to travel home from college. I was so pissed that I was determined to get out of India so I have to never deal with Indian railways. I had tried all possible ways to hack the booking system and had my own chrome extensions to fill up the forms.
  - afiori 6y ago
    If the timeframe is so tight it would be way more stable to just register all booking attempts (let's say up to 7:15) and then distribute the ticket randomly between unique users for some definition of uniwue user
- sbmthakur 6y ago
  This is still better. Certain publications described this as an attempt to stifle innovation. https://theprint.in/opinion/india-wants-innovation-but-arrests-iit-grad-who-develops-faster-tatkal-ticket-booking-app/535095/ https://theprint.in/opinion/india-wants-innovation-but-arres...
- Beggers1960 6y ago
  One the rare situations where this type of issue should be - in part - rewarded to some degree.
  - realshadow 6y ago
    And people who follow the rules should be punished. facepalm
Karupan 6y ago
People outside India may not realize the importance of train tickets and how difficult they can be to book. Trains are still the primary mode of transport for long distance travel and some routes get booked out in minutes after reservations open. There have been ticket mafias who mass book tickets and resell them in the black market for a huge profit. I do appreciate that the developer was solving a genuine need, so kudos to him. But anyone from India could've seen the government's reaction coming a mile away.
- avh02 6y ago
  when i visited india, i found the "next generation" booking system to be a bit of a joke, so i don't blame this guy for trying to make it better (whether or not he was profiting). My favourite part was the "maintenance" window the website would go through every night. Which was never really indicated on the website other than vague messages/errors - but everybody knew that's what it was.
  - moh_maya 6y ago
    I think This is a very naïve, unfair take on one of the world's most sophisticated, complex, real-time booking systems that is unparalleled in what it enables. [1,2] The front end definitely can be much much better; but the issue is very simply there are not enough tickets to match the demand. "From 29 tickets booked in a day in 2002, it has reached to 13 Lakh tickets a day as of now. It is reported that the IRCTC system is currently capable of booking 15K tickets a minute online and can handle 3 Lakh concurrent users to handle any surge in demand." [1] (13 lakhs is 1.3 million) "Of the 15 million passengers who climb aboard one of 8,520 trains each day, about 550,000 have reserved accommodations. Their journeys can start in any part of India and end in any other part, with travel times as long as 48 hours and distances up to several thousand kilometres. The challenge is to provide a reservation system that can support such a huge number-regardless of whether it’s measured by kilometres, passenger numbers, routing complexity, or simply the sheer scale of country. " [2] If anyone has better references on the frankly astounding technical accomplishment that the CRIS Passenger Reservation system, please share. "Passenger Reservation System (PRS): A nationwide online passenger reservation and ticketing system, developed and maintained by CRIS, was developed in C and Fortran on a Digital OpenVMS operating system using RTR (Reliable Transaction Router) as middleware. Also known as CONCERT (Country-wide Network of Computerised Enhanced Reservation and Ticketing), it interconnects the four regional computing systems (in New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai) into a national PRS grid. It allows a passenger anywhere to book train tickets from any station to any station. PRS handles reservations, changes, cancellations and refunds, reserving over 1.6 million seats and berths daily. Complex rules, validations and fare-computation techniques are interwoven in the application" [3] [1] https://inc42.com/features/how-online-train-booking-ticket-platforms-are-gearing-up-for-indian-railways-privatised-future/ https://inc42.com/features/how-online-train-booking-ticket-p... [2] http://www.egyankosh.ac.in/bitstream/123456789/25869/1/Unit-11.pdf http://www.egyankosh.ac.in/bitstream/123456789/25869/1/Unit-... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_for_Railway_Information_Systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_for_Railway_Information...
blackoil 6y ago
Tatkal tickets are special tickets that are opened two days before date of travel at 9 in morning. These are important tickets as a last chance for some urgent travel because usually trains are full long back. To prevent abuse there are lots of restrictions, including not available on any third party. It was a lame app that prefilled the form in Railway app and charged money for this feature. This must have triggered some TnC breach. Similar things exist as browser plugin/scripts, but they are free and stay under the radar.
surfingdino 6y ago
Looks like both the railways and the developer have never heard of APIs.
- jaikant77 6y ago
  They do have API's but they aren't open. They gives access to them to some popular online travel portals. They have a process around giving access to their APIs
2Gkashmiri 6y ago
so let me get this correct for non indians here. a stupid ass government website for booking railway tickets which is the opposite of intuitive, crashes daily, has pathetic captcha and has all sorts of glitches. if facebook can handle a billion users on a daily basis, why cant the irctc website. in 2020 this unacceptable. coming on to the guy here, >Developing an unauthorised software bypassing e-ticketing system is an offence. Such applications defeated the purpose of having a first-come-first-serve system and benefit only a few who use the software so why not have this functionality in the first party website in the first place? >However, railway officials clarified Yuvrajaa bypassed the railway system and made money illegally which is a crime. He wasn’t event an authorized agent registered with IRCTC to book tickets. did this guy take a users money, buy a ticket on his behalaf and get a commission from the railways? no. from the customer? no. all he did was make a fucking autohotkey for their website. he charged 20 rupees, thats USD $ 0.30 for hosting the service, paying for the upkeep. any of his non customers who were disadvantaged because of his service, well no shit. go and ask the government to fix their website and bring it in parity with this guy look. this guy automated typing, refreshing, probably even bypassing captchas. on that note, why should this be "illegal" to do automation? just because they say in Tnc's? grow a pair. why should the government rate limit customers by shoving captchas? i had the misfortune of buying a couple of tickets back in june 20 or july was it for some relatives. that was the most agonizing time of my life. random refreshes, logouts, not being able to do multiple logins, having an actual monthly limit on the number of tickets you can buy in a month, the payment failed 4 times. i had to borrow money twice because the payment was deducted but credit not given. refund was sanctioned after 15 days AFTER a deduction of Rs. 2500 i think USD $ 40. if i had used this guys service, i would have been glad to pay him 10 times over because the service which should have been promised by the first party itself IRCTC was in 1990's. >regulations. such a bs word in india. why doesnt the railway make their website like a 2020 website which does automation, remembers your shit, allows instant payment and refund, this and that
- sokoloff 6y ago
  > so why not have this functionality in the first party website in the first place? This functionality being to work-around the intended first-come, first-serve allocation of these last minute tickets? It sounds like the overall system isn’t in a healthy, modern state, but I don’t think the essential feature this guy’s tool provided is desired by the original website.
vertis 6y ago
IMO Give this developer a ticket to the next ycombinator batch. Don't know how likely that is given the current US stance on immigration, but he clearly has the initiative, even if his app is not welcome.
- free 6y ago
  Am not so sure he will fare well in US. I recall Aaron Swartz faced a similar charge leading to his tragic demise.
  - vertis 6y ago
    I suspect the developer learned from the experience, and would likely not repeat the same mistake.
junon 6y ago
Flagged, please do not editorialize titles...
known 6y ago
He did https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote_rigging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote_rigging type of booking app
coldtea 6y ago
Sounds like what would happen anywhere in the world if you make an unauthorized booking app for anything...
- smabie 6y ago
  prison for a week?
  - coldtea 6y ago
    Prison most likely. The length depends...
tyingq 6y ago
Something pretty similar happened in the US with Ticketmaster. https://www.wired.com/2010/11/wiseguys-plead-guilty/ https://www.wired.com/2010/11/wiseguys-plead-guilty/
thoughtstheseus 6y ago
Skyscanner for Amtrak in the U.S. sounds like a great idea.
bakul 6y ago
His punishment should have been to work with the Indian Railway to design a better system that meets their requirements & their customers’ needs as equitably as possible.

165 points by jaikant77 6y ago

I can't figure out if it was just "pasting fields into the UI" as they say (in which case how were they caught with traffic monitoring???) or if it was a screen scraper In any case, he clearly wasn't collecting ticket payments on behalf of the train company, so I don't see how they could accuse him of acting as an unauthorised agent

kumarvvr 6y ago
When you signup for an account for the Indian railways, you are explicitly prohibited from making money off of the service in any form. This is because there is a black market for railway tickets, where agents charge a high free for booking tickets online for many illetrate buyers, especially in rural areas.

ch_123 6y ago

The headline has been editorialized. While I don't agree with what the authorities did here, and believe the developer was acting in good faith, the developer created an app for buying railway tickets which charged a small fee for the tickets - the issue was that he was arrested for making money off ticket sales, as opposed to "automating forms on a website"

moh_maya 6y ago
Yep. He circumvented rate-limiters that ensured that you couldn't game the booking system. The regulations very clearly prohibit this to ensure fair access. Now, one can absolutely argue about whether this form of rate limiting is the right approach, but to circumvent something that is clearly prohibited & charge money to do that is illegal. This does not mean that I think the current system is perfect OR that there aren't other players who also have backdoors into the process; just that the action is not as egregious as 'BUREAUCRATS STIFILING INNOVATION'. There is more nuance needed here [1]. "According to the sources, the apps enabled users to book Tatkal tickets bypassing security checks on the IRCTC portal. His mobile applications were unauthorized and had features to bypasses Completely Automated Public Turing Test (CAPTCHA), a security measure that users must fill in while logging in to IRCTC. As per reports the apps also bypassed other security measures installed by the IRCTC." ... "However, railway officials clarified Yuvrajaa bypassed the railway system and made money illegally which is a crime. He wasn’t event an authorized agent registered with IRCTC to book tickets. RPF has registered a case under section 143 (2) of the Railways Act (penalty for unauthorised carrying on of the business of procuring and supplying of railway tickets). Developing an unauthorised software bypassing e-ticketing system is an offence. Such applications defeated the purpose of having a first-come-first-serve system and benefit only a few who use the software." This govt., like most Indian govts, has a stupidly archaic & top-down / low-trust / risk-averse / bean-counter approach to innovation and transparency (case in point, the Covid tracking app Arogya Setu's sordid development & transparency issues), but this specific incident isn't the right stick, IMO. :) [1] https://www.the420.in/conman-or-genius-arrest-of-iit-kharagpur-student-who-made-faster-rail-ticket-booking-app-than-irctc-sparks-debate/ https://www.the420.in/conman-or-genius-arrest-of-iit-kharagp...
- yitchelle 6y ago
  You see similar software used in Auction sites such as eBay and the likes. Are this type of software also banned in India?
  - moh_maya 6y ago
    AFAIK, for railways ticket bookings, yes; not banned but illegal. However, it's common knowledge that they exist and are used.
    - jaikant77 6y ago
      India has a strong legal framework and unfortunately very poor implementation (the arrest is an example of poor implementation/bullying by the state). When you say illegal, you should be able to specify the law under which it is illegal. Broadly classifying anything not convenient to the state as illegal does not stand ground, AFAIK there is no law which prohibits automation of forms on any website?
      - ch_123 6y ago
        You're attacking a strawman here. The issue was that he was making a profit by reselling tickets, not by automating filling forms in a website. The mechanism is not particularly relevant. By analogy, it is legal to park my car in my own garden, but not legal to park it in my neighbour's garden. If I were to do that, I might expect to be punished for "parking my car".
        jkoudys 6y ago
        You start by accusing him of using a strawman, then using an analogy which doesn't even remotely apply. It's closer to your neighbour selling you the rights to park in their garden, then you selling those rights to someone else. Far from a criminal, arrestable offence, so their point on the broad-brush of being "illegal" stands. Even my closer analogy is still pretty far off and it's much more innocent. Maybe closer to charging a fee to use a very tricky to figure out parking meter.
jaikant77 6y ago
Yes. thats because technically thats what he seems to have done. Since tatkal tickets are limited in number, by prefilling and automating the forms he effectively helps his clients jump the queue. This is a clear hack, but I find it irrational to arrest a person because the website is suboptimal and cannot prevent his hack from running. This similar to what Github did when they pulled down youtube-dl, bully your way to compliance.
- dmurray 6y ago
  Github wasn't bullying anyone in the youtube-dl saga. Their crime was that they didn't stand up for their user.
Karishma1234 6y ago
Some context here: Indian railways website is very slow and pathetic (so bad that there are lengthy discussion on HN about it. search for IRCTC). Given the shortage of tickets thousands of people try to book tickets at 7am when the window to book a certain class of tickets call `Tatkal` opens. Thousands of people are trying to book the exact same tickets from say 7am and by 7:10 am all tickets get sold out. Now, if you could prefill all the forms and just press submit you might be able to buy the tickets before others. Railways website specifically tries to not allow any kind of pre-filling. The app merely bypasses that restriction. (I have written scripts in past to do just that when I lived there). Railways is a classic colonial government system and operates pretty much as if India is still a British colony. They have their own police force called RPF which arrested the boy under Railways act 1989 for “unauthorised business of procuring and supplying railway tickets” which the boy did not do at all. Not to mention, the railways form has a captcha so it was not even a programmatic submission. There are railways mafias in India who buy tickets by bribing railways staff and I suspect these people are responsible for getting this boy jailed as his solution helped more genuine passengers to book their tickets by undercutting the "agents". It remains to be seen how the courts apply the standard here but it will probably take around 10-15 years for the courts to come to a verdict. Personal Rant: When I was in India, I had the misfortune of relying on Indian railways to travel home from college. I was so pissed that I was determined to get out of India so I have to never deal with Indian railways. I had tried all possible ways to hack the booking system and had my own chrome extensions to fill up the forms.
- afiori 6y ago
  If the timeframe is so tight it would be way more stable to just register all booking attempts (let's say up to 7:15) and then distribute the ticket randomly between unique users for some definition of uniwue user
sbmthakur 6y ago
This is still better. Certain publications described this as an attempt to stifle innovation. https://theprint.in/opinion/india-wants-innovation-but-arrests-iit-grad-who-develops-faster-tatkal-ticket-booking-app/535095/ https://theprint.in/opinion/india-wants-innovation-but-arres...
Beggers1960 6y ago
One the rare situations where this type of issue should be - in part - rewarded to some degree.
- realshadow 6y ago
  And people who follow the rules should be punished. facepalm

Karupan 6y ago

People outside India may not realize the importance of train tickets and how difficult they can be to book. Trains are still the primary mode of transport for long distance travel and some routes get booked out in minutes after reservations open. There have been ticket mafias who mass book tickets and resell them in the black market for a huge profit. I do appreciate that the developer was solving a genuine need, so kudos to him. But anyone from India could've seen the government's reaction coming a mile away.

avh02 6y ago
when i visited india, i found the "next generation" booking system to be a bit of a joke, so i don't blame this guy for trying to make it better (whether or not he was profiting). My favourite part was the "maintenance" window the website would go through every night. Which was never really indicated on the website other than vague messages/errors - but everybody knew that's what it was.
- moh_maya 6y ago
  I think This is a very naïve, unfair take on one of the world's most sophisticated, complex, real-time booking systems that is unparalleled in what it enables. [1,2] The front end definitely can be much much better; but the issue is very simply there are not enough tickets to match the demand. "From 29 tickets booked in a day in 2002, it has reached to 13 Lakh tickets a day as of now. It is reported that the IRCTC system is currently capable of booking 15K tickets a minute online and can handle 3 Lakh concurrent users to handle any surge in demand." [1] (13 lakhs is 1.3 million) "Of the 15 million passengers who climb aboard one of 8,520 trains each day, about 550,000 have reserved accommodations. Their journeys can start in any part of India and end in any other part, with travel times as long as 48 hours and distances up to several thousand kilometres. The challenge is to provide a reservation system that can support such a huge number-regardless of whether it’s measured by kilometres, passenger numbers, routing complexity, or simply the sheer scale of country. " [2] If anyone has better references on the frankly astounding technical accomplishment that the CRIS Passenger Reservation system, please share. "Passenger Reservation System (PRS): A nationwide online passenger reservation and ticketing system, developed and maintained by CRIS, was developed in C and Fortran on a Digital OpenVMS operating system using RTR (Reliable Transaction Router) as middleware. Also known as CONCERT (Country-wide Network of Computerised Enhanced Reservation and Ticketing), it interconnects the four regional computing systems (in New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai) into a national PRS grid. It allows a passenger anywhere to book train tickets from any station to any station. PRS handles reservations, changes, cancellations and refunds, reserving over 1.6 million seats and berths daily. Complex rules, validations and fare-computation techniques are interwoven in the application" [3] [1] https://inc42.com/features/how-online-train-booking-ticket-platforms-are-gearing-up-for-indian-railways-privatised-future/ https://inc42.com/features/how-online-train-booking-ticket-p... [2] http://www.egyankosh.ac.in/bitstream/123456789/25869/1/Unit-11.pdf http://www.egyankosh.ac.in/bitstream/123456789/25869/1/Unit-... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_for_Railway_Information_Systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_for_Railway_Information...

blackoil 6y ago

Tatkal tickets are special tickets that are opened two days before date of travel at 9 in morning. These are important tickets as a last chance for some urgent travel because usually trains are full long back. To prevent abuse there are lots of restrictions, including not available on any third party. It was a lame app that prefilled the form in Railway app and charged money for this feature. This must have triggered some TnC breach. Similar things exist as browser plugin/scripts, but they are free and stay under the radar.

surfingdino 6y ago

Looks like both the railways and the developer have never heard of APIs.

jaikant77 6y ago
They do have API's but they aren't open. They gives access to them to some popular online travel portals. They have a process around giving access to their APIs

2Gkashmiri 6y ago

so let me get this correct for non indians here. a stupid ass government website for booking railway tickets which is the opposite of intuitive, crashes daily, has pathetic captcha and has all sorts of glitches. if facebook can handle a billion users on a daily basis, why cant the irctc website. in 2020 this unacceptable. coming on to the guy here, >Developing an unauthorised software bypassing e-ticketing system is an offence. Such applications defeated the purpose of having a first-come-first-serve system and benefit only a few who use the software so why not have this functionality in the first party website in the first place? >However, railway officials clarified Yuvrajaa bypassed the railway system and made money illegally which is a crime. He wasn’t event an authorized agent registered with IRCTC to book tickets. did this guy take a users money, buy a ticket on his behalaf and get a commission from the railways? no. from the customer? no. all he did was make a fucking autohotkey for their website. he charged 20 rupees, thats USD $ 0.30 for hosting the service, paying for the upkeep. any of his non customers who were disadvantaged because of his service, well no shit. go and ask the government to fix their website and bring it in parity with this guy look. this guy automated typing, refreshing, probably even bypassing captchas. on that note, why should this be "illegal" to do automation? just because they say in Tnc's? grow a pair. why should the government rate limit customers by shoving captchas? i had the misfortune of buying a couple of tickets back in june 20 or july was it for some relatives. that was the most agonizing time of my life. random refreshes, logouts, not being able to do multiple logins, having an actual monthly limit on the number of tickets you can buy in a month, the payment failed 4 times. i had to borrow money twice because the payment was deducted but credit not given. refund was sanctioned after 15 days AFTER a deduction of Rs. 2500 i think USD $ 40. if i had used this guys service, i would have been glad to pay him 10 times over because the service which should have been promised by the first party itself IRCTC was in 1990's. >regulations. such a bs word in india. why doesnt the railway make their website like a 2020 website which does automation, remembers your shit, allows instant payment and refund, this and that

sokoloff 6y ago
> so why not have this functionality in the first party website in the first place? This functionality being to work-around the intended first-come, first-serve allocation of these last minute tickets? It sounds like the overall system isn’t in a healthy, modern state, but I don’t think the essential feature this guy’s tool provided is desired by the original website.

vertis 6y ago

IMO Give this developer a ticket to the next ycombinator batch. Don't know how likely that is given the current US stance on immigration, but he clearly has the initiative, even if his app is not welcome.

free 6y ago
Am not so sure he will fare well in US. I recall Aaron Swartz faced a similar charge leading to his tragic demise.
- vertis 6y ago
  I suspect the developer learned from the experience, and would likely not repeat the same mistake.

junon 6y ago

Flagged, please do not editorialize titles...

known 6y ago

He did https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote_rigging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote_rigging type of booking app

coldtea 6y ago

Sounds like what would happen anywhere in the world if you make an unauthorized booking app for anything...

smabie 6y ago
prison for a week?
- coldtea 6y ago
  Prison most likely. The length depends...

tyingq 6y ago

Something pretty similar happened in the US with Ticketmaster. https://www.wired.com/2010/11/wiseguys-plead-guilty/ https://www.wired.com/2010/11/wiseguys-plead-guilty/

thoughtstheseus 6y ago

Skyscanner for Amtrak in the U.S. sounds like a great idea.

bakul 6y ago

His punishment should have been to work with the Indian Railway to design a better system that meets their requirements & their customers’ needs as equitably as possible.