BEST conductor held for pocketing ticket sale money

A 27-year-old junior bus conductor, Babu Sampat Gambhire, who tried to make some quick bucks by cheating the BEST, was arrested by the Nagpada police. The conductor allegedly used to sell BEST tickets to commuters and pocket the money. He also duplicated the tickets and had plans to sell them. 

The arrested conductor has been working with BEST since 2008.

According to the police, the complainant in the case is Tukaram Malap, who is a bus inspector at Mumbai Central Depot office and has been working with the BEST since 1979. His job is to check the tickets returned by the conductors. “Each conductor working with the BEST is given a new ticket generating machine and a box filled with tickets. These tickets can be used in case the machine stops working. The conductors are also given a form wherein they have to specify which tickets were sold,” said an officer from Nagpada police station.

He added that recently when Gambhire returned his box containing the tickets to Malap, he checked the box and found an extra set of tickets concealed in the box.

“The tickets seemed to be printed on a different type of paper. On checking further, Malap realised that the concealed tickets has already been sold three months ago, as per records,” the officer added.

Malap then lodged a complaint with the Nagpada police. “We arrested Gambhire and he revealed that he used to make colour xerox of some of the tickets, sell them and pocket the money. He had forgotten to pull out the duplicate set from the box, which led to his arrest,” said the officer.