Popular fiction maker Ashfaque Nipun has questioned how tickets for two trains on the Dhaka-Cox’s Bazar route could sell out within just "one minute" of online sales opening, raising questions about the railway’s ticketing system.
In a Facebook post on Wednesday night, he shared his experience of trying to buy three train tickets for his maternal uncle, aunt and cousin, who are planning to visit Cox’s Bazar during the Durga Puja holidays.
Nipun said his uncle, due to his age and health condition, cannot sit continuously for 10 to 12 hours, making train travel a preferable option to a long bus journey.
He said he sat down with his mobile phone at around 7:45am, 15 minutes before online ticket sales were scheduled to open at 8am.
“I do not want to take any risk,” Nipun wrote, adding that he had switched off other notifications on his phone so that nothing could distract him while trying to secure the tickets.
As 8am approached, he logged out and logged back into the ticketing system, saying he wanted to avoid being automatically logged out during the booking process. Then came the moment he had been waiting for.
“At 8:00am, I immediately pressed ‘Search Train’,” Nipun wrote. He said the available seat plans appeared on the screen, with rows of seats seemingly inviting passengers to choose them.
However, by around 8:01am, according to Nipun, tickets for both trains had disappeared.
The acclaimed director questioned how the tickets could have been sold so quickly when the online booking process itself requires several steps, including seat selection, OTP verification, payment and final confirmation.
Based on his experience of regularly travelling by train and purchasing tickets online, he said completing the process normally takes at least six to seven minutes.
“So, even if everyone starts at exactly 8am, selects their preferred seats at record speed and has a high-speed internet connection, it should take at least until 8:07 am for the tickets to be processed,” he argued.
The director questioned, “Then how did all the tickets of two trains disappear at 8:01?”
Nipun used his trademark satirical tone to describe the situation, joking that Bangladesh Railway had created a “commercial fiction” in which two trains effectively disappeared within one minute.
He stressed that he does not expect tickets to be readily available during Eid, Puja or other long holidays, when demand is exceptionally high. Rather, he said, he regularly waits before the ticket sales open in an attempt to secure seats for his family, but has repeatedly failed.
The filmmaker then alleged that a ticket syndicate has been operating within Bangladesh Railway for years.
He claimed that the problem has persisted across different governments and questioned whether changes to ticketing software or systems would be enough to address it.
Nipun also called for action against what he described as entrenched syndicates in the railway and airport sectors, saying that breaking such networks would be a major measure of a government’s success.
“Can you do it? Do you have the courage?” he asked at the end of his post.