Western Railway recovers fines worth Rs 38.10 crore from ticketless passengers in Mumbai suburban section

PIC/WESTERN RAILWAY

Western Railway has ramped up efforts to ensure a smooth and comfortable travel experience for all legitimate passengers by intensifying ticket-checking drives across its services. These drives are aimed at curbing the issue of ticketless and irregular travel across Mumbai suburban local services, mail/express trains as well as passenger and holiday special trains.

Between April 2024 and January 2025, the ticket-checking teams, supervised by senior commercial officers, conducted a series of intensive checks. As a result, fines worth Rs 117.54 crore were recovered from ticketless travellers. Of this total, Rs 38.10 crore was specifically recovered from the Mumbai suburban section.

Vineet Abhishek, Chief Public Relations Officer of Western Railway, revealed that in January 2025 alone, Rs 13.08 crore was collected after detecting 2.24 lakh ticketless or irregular passengers, including cases involving unbooked luggage. Additionally, the Mumbai suburban section accounted for Rs 4.13 crore in fines from 98,000 cases during the same month.

In an effort to curb unauthorized travel on air-conditioned (AC) local trains, frequent surprise ticket-checking operations are being conducted, leading to nearly 52,000 unauthorised passengers traveling on AC trains from April 2024 to January 2025 being fined a total of more than Rs 1.72 crore.