RPF crackdown on illegal ads on trains

CHENNAI: Planning unauthorised advertisements on trains with your mobile number? Beware, you could land in serious trouble.Cracking down on unauthorised advertisements on trains, the Railway Protection Force (RPF) has written to telecom  companies to terminate services to the mobile numbers found on advertisement stickers pasted inside the compartments of local trains in Chennai.A special drive to remove such unauthorised advertisement stickers from trains was launched after Independence Day.  Prior to that, the RPF collected details of the advertisers. The RPF issued warnings to them asking them not to paste any stickers in local trains and engaged the services of the cleaning department of the railways to remove them. A special team had been formed to check if any  fresh stickers are pasted. The RPF personnel had themselves made calls to the numbers given in the stickers and tracked down 25 such advertisers, who were  later fined.In addition, the RPF has written to service providers like Aircel, Vodafone, Reliance, Airtel and Idea seeking termination of connection to the mobile numbers given in the advertisement stickers. Hundreds of such mobile numbers were listed in the letters sent by the RPF. Senior Divisional Security Commissioner of RPF S R Gandhi said, “Stringent action has been taken against those who pasted advertisement stickers in trains as most of them are aimed at cheating people. A special team has been formed to monitor and curb the  activity.”