Cobrapost Unearths Racket Selling Stuffs Illegally at Railway Stations of Delhi NCR

Our next port of call was Old Delhi Railway Station where we came to know that the bottled water that is being sold is not Rail Neer, which is packaged and sold by Indian Railways at its stations. Here, Manoj, Awadhesh, Sanjay, Pujari and Ehsan are ringleaders of this racket of selling bottled water other than allowed by the Indian Railways. When our reporter told Manoj he would like to sell bottled water, Manoj directed us to another gang-leader Ehsan but we met Sanjay and Awadhesh instead. Sanjay asked our reporter to get therein and request them to allow him sell water, and then he can give him a case of water bottles. But, when the reporter went in he met instead another boy who advised him to sell anything he wanted except bottled water. There is a lot of risk involved, although we are managing to sell water. You just start selling whatever stuff you want, he told us, and someone will come to you to collect entry fee, that is, mafia tax, in other words. But we wanted to identify who this gang-leader was. So, we again went to Sanjay who after much dilly-dallying and prodding told us the name of the leader: Pujari. He will come to us, we were told, on his own when we sell our stuff at the station. But we were not there to sell our wares, so nobody approached us introducing himself as Pujari to collect entry fee. In the meanwhile, we visited certain licensed stalls but none of the owners was selling Rail Neer at the fixed price of Rs. 15. We bought a bottle for Rs. 20. Even we were witness to an unpleasant argument by an enraged passenger who was asking a vendor for the justification of charging so much. You can buy the bottle at Rs. 20 if it pleases you, the vendor curtly told the passenger, otherwise you can get lost.