chennai after sensitising people about the sinister ways of biscuit bandits the railway protection force rpf has begun providing awareness lessons to the central reserve police force crpf to help prevent the armed servicemen from falling prey to the criminals the firstofitskind exercise comes in the wake of the heightened security scenario and reports that service personnel might be targeted by terrorists for stealing their identity cards and even weapons recently awareness campaigns were carried out among crpf personnel in avadi and for passengers in ambattur and katpadi areas that are emerging as hubs for doping gangs in tamil nadu we selected crpf personnel because the forces new recruits are more vulnerable to such gangs they often get friendly with copassengers and hence may be targeted by doping gangs said j ajith kumar rpf inspector avadi who conducted the training programme a thousand constables 25 trainers and 15 officers took part in the awareness campaign held at crpfs group centre in avadi on sunday recently a crpf constable lost his pistol after he was targeted by a doping gang we described the various modus operandi being adopted by doping gangs and the areas where they operate kumar addedchief security commissioner g m p reddy said a oneweek awareness campaign was carried out for passengers and service personnel in tamil nadu and kerala the programme was held because this is the time when several people travel on holiday service personnel were included because they often travel in batches on trainsthe rpf also wants to take the awareness programmes to schools and colleges to educate potential travellers reddy added banners pamphlets and stickers were distributed among the service personnelthe gangs are also changing their ways earlier they used to give sedativelaced sweets to passengers now after frequent crackdowns have exposed their strategy they have switched to other eatables like laddus water soft drinks prasadam and even coffee and tea an rpf official saidservice personnel need to be more aware about such gangs because they travel often to north india where the gangs are more organised the gangs that operate in the northern states have different wings a scout to assess and identify vulnerable passengers the dopers who hand out spiked food or beverages and a support team that pretends to be passengers to mislead potential victims