(REUTERS): At least 11 people have been arrested for being suspected members of a Bangladesh trafficking gang that lured girls and women into India’s sex trade using TikTok, Dhaka police said on Tuesday.
A video of a Bangladeshi woman being tortured and sexually assaulted went viral on social media last week, prompting the investigation by police, who said the traffickers had enticed the women with promises of well-paid jobs across the border.
The gang’s alleged ringleader Rafizul Islam Ridoy — nicknamed “TikTok Ridoy” — would “lure young girls from TikTok and other social media groups, promising to make them TikTok models”, Bangladesh’s Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) paramilitary unit said.
However, the victims were instead smuggled into southern India and forced into sex work. The suspects were all detained over the last week. The latest arrests came on Monday when two men were held in a southwestern border district in Bangladesh for allegedly trafficking girls and women, Dhaka police’s deputy commissioner Mohammad Shahidullah said.
“One of them has told us that he has sent 1,000 people to India,” Shahidullah said. A total of nine people were arrested in Bangladesh and two others in India’s tech hub Bangalore for allegedly being part of the trafficking gang, police added.
Shahidullah said that since 2019 when TikTok became popular in Bangladesh, such gangs had sprung up to draw in teenagers from low-income families. They would be invited to pool parties, star in TikTok videos and “sold dreams of well-paid salaries in call centres, sales and service centres”, he added.
