Swindlers who drug and loot people

In news for quite a long time though, gangs that drug and loot people, especially passengers on buses and trains, have made Dhaka front-page headlines for a few months. The gang members offer passengers biscuits or similar food items containing sedatives and even drinking water mixed with intoxicants to drug them unconscious before decamping with what the passengers have on them. Among the policemen and in Bangla newspapers, such gangs are known as 'ajnan (or agyan, in popular spelling, or even oggan, in the basest form) party.' As the use of the phrase 'agyan party' sounds a bit awkward in English, a decision was made on 'drugger' (from 'to drug' people) to be used instead. This also sounded awkward and the word is not in dictionaries in the sense. But it kept being used with no other appropriate words or phrases around. Besides, 'drugger' in today's fringe English means 'someone among the friends doing drugs; a polite, friendly way of calling someone like a drug addict' or 'someone who calls in the middle of the night and, being sentimental, talks for minutes even if the mobile is on voice mail or he is not being listened to.' Some proposed the use of 'doper' which is also an agent noun with a sense of intransitivity, someone who smokes marijuana on a regular basis.

A report in an Indian newspaper in 1999, as searched online, called such a group 'biscuit gang' and explained the 'modus operandi' of the gang in a sentence down the second paragraph. Another report in an Indian newspaper said 'the police busted a drugging gang operating in Delhi.' Yes, 'drugging gang.' This is perhaps the best of the options, and 'drugging gangsters.' 'Doping gang' might do, but the instance of the phrase is rarer, compared with the instance of 'drugging gang.' But it is not the drug gang, which will mean a gang involved in the traffic in drug substances. An Agence France-Presse report, datelined Bangkok, January 8, 1997 was headlined 'Thai police investigating tourist drugging gang,' but the copy carefully avoided using the phrase and used narration to describe the event.