Tatkal Ticket Heist: Payment gateways crash, vanishing of seat bookings – Indian Railways finally pins down the culprit

India Railway Tatkal ticket: Every morning at exactly 10 am, millions of Indians attempt the near-impossible: booking a Tatkal ticket through the Indian Railways’ IRCTC portal. What’s meant to be a solution for urgent travel has turned into a frustrating digital stampede. Pages freeze, payment gateways crash, and available seats vanish within seconds — a phenomenon that has become all too familiar to regular passengers in recent days.

Now, Indian Railways has pulled back the curtain, revealing the culprits behind the vanishing act: an army of bots, fake user IDs, and fraudsters gaming the system.

What did IRCTC say about the issue?

Between January and May 2025 alone, IRCTC detected 2.9 lakh suspicious PNRs created within just five minutes of the booking windows opening — a clear indicator of system abuse, according to a Times of India report. As part of a crackdown, officials deactivated a staggering 2.5 crore user IDs and flagged another 20 lakh for revalidation. Many of these accounts were linked to agents or software exploiting loopholes in the system.

Using disposable email IDs — temporary, throwaway addresses — these actors created multiple fake accounts to bypass IRCTC’s checks. A total of 6,800 such domains have been blocked, and 134 complaints lodged on the national cybercrime portal. The scale of the operation has shocked many, but also brought relief to regular passengers who suspected foul play.

Ticket black market

Tatkal was introduced as a lifeline for those with urgent travel needs. Instead, it’s become a battleground ruled by bots and booking mafias. Illegal software like “Nexus” and “Super Tatkal” are widely believed to be at the heart of this racket, capable of logging in, filling forms, and making payments faster than any human.

Even trains to remote towns — where demand shouldn’t be overwhelming — see instant sellouts. It’s not demand; it’s digital manipulation.

What is IRCTC doing about it?

Officials claim they are now better equipped to fight back. In addition to blocking suspicious domains and IDs, IRCTC has employed anti-BOT software and partnered with a leading content delivery network to better handle traffic surges. These tools help distinguish between genuine human users and automated scripts, making the playing field fairer.

In fact, IRCTC claims it recorded its highest ever per-minute booking — 31,814 tickets — on May 22, 2025 at 10 AM. They also highlight that the attempt-to-booking success ratio has improved from 43.1% to 62.2% between October 2024 and May 2025.

A Velumani, founder of Thyrocare, believes the answer lies in staggering access to the booking system. Drawing on his experience managing server loads, Velumani suggests that only 10% of trains be released each hour, reducing the strain on servers and giving every user a fair shot.

“Why not let passengers book in timed slots rather than all at once?” he asked in a viral post tagging IRCTC — a sentiment echoed by thousands fed up with the chaos.

Reacting to Velumani’s post, Sandip Sabharwal said he has personally failed 90 per cent of the time while trying to book Tatkal tickets, calling the experience frustrating and largely ineffective. “I have pointed this out many time. Although I haven’t travelled by Rail for years. I have tried to book for my staff several times & failed exactly like this 90% of the time unless it’s AC Tatkal where you still might get,” he wrote on X.

Beyond numbers and servers lie the real costs — missed funerals, botched interviews, and emotional breakdowns. One user described booking tickets for a journey with his elderly mother: after entering all details by 10:03 AM and completing payment by 10:05, he still ended up on the waitlist.