2 weeks Ago By Kamya Pandey
Explainer Briefly Slides The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has conducted search operations and seized devices in Delhi, Mumbai, Jaipur, Bengaluru, and Chandigarh to investigate ticket scalping for concerts of British band Coldplay and Indian singer Diljit Dosanjh. Coldplay and Dosanjh concert tickets were up for sale on BookMyShow and Zomato Live, respectively and were sold out in minutes. ED says that this ultimately led to “black-marketing of tickets at exorbitant prices.
” “Following the rapid sellout, numerous reports have emerged of individuals being deceived/cheated through fraudulent ticket sales. Many fans have discovered that they were sold fake tickets or charged exorbitant prices for legitimate ones,” ED said in a press release. Specifically in the case of Coldplay, last month a lawyer lodged a complaint against BookMyShow in Mumbai arguing that the company conspired to black market tickets on ticket re-selling platform Viagogo.
Eventually, BookMyShow filed a complaint of its own against ticket scalping. It gave the police detailed information about all the resellers it could locate, including independent individuals, reselling tickets for this tour on platforms like Instagram and WhatsApp and Viagogo. ED says it initiated an investigation into the matter under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2003 (PMLA) to examine the “financial networks supporting these scams and to trace the Proceeds of Crime generated from such illegal activities.
” It added that the search and device seizure it carried out revealed information about multiple people involved in providing concertgoers tickets (including fake ones) on platforms like Instagram, WhatsApp, and Telegram. It is looking further into the matter. How authorities carry out device search and seizure: As per a 2022 MediaNama exclusive , police officials in India have specific tools to break into devices like Israeli firm Cellebrite’s UFED.
They also have other tools (like Cellebrite’s Cloud Analyzer) to extract a person’s social media information as well as other cloud-based information (like files, instant messaging records, etc). Hyderabad Police’s Assistant Commissioner of Police in the Cyber Crime Wing, KVM Prasad, told MediaNama at the time that there are tools like Forensic Toolkit (FTK) which allow them to recover deleted information. Later, in 2024 , another police official in Banglore confirmed the same (although without mentioning a specific software’s name) as well.
He informed MediaNama that this tool could retrieve deleted messages, including details of the recipient and other related information. Further, he explained that in cases of preliminary investigations, the police can sometimes seize devices without an FIR, court order, or a warrant against a person. Also read:.
