Bangladesh traffic gangs attracted girls using TikTok: Police | Human Trafficking News

Eleven of the girls and women who were arrested were lured to the sex trade in India using the alleged social media platform of gang members.

At least 11 people have been arrested for being suspected members of a Bangladeshi trafficking group that lured girls and women to the Indian sex trade via social media platform TikTok, Dhaka police said.

The alleged leader of the Rafizul Islam Ridoy group – nicknamed TikTok Ridoy – “would attract young girls from TikTok and other social media groups, promising to make TikTok a role model,” the Bangladesh Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) paramilitary unit said on Tuesday.

However, the victims entered southern India and were forced into sex work, according to a RAB note.

The arrests occurred in late May when video clips of an alleged sexual assault on a Bangladeshi woman were rounded off on social media, prompting an investigation into the group, the RAB said.

All of the suspects were arrested last week.

The latest arrests came on Monday when two men were arrested in the southwestern border district of Bangladesh on charges of girls and women between the ages of 17 and 22, Dhaka Police Deputy Commissioner Mohammad Shahidullah said.

“One of them told us that he has sent 1,000 people to India,” Shahidullah told AFP news agency.

A total of nine people were arrested in Bangladesh and two others at the Bengaluru technology center in India on charges of being members of a trafficking gang, police added.

City police commissioner Kamal Pant Bengaluru told AFP on Tuesday that four other people had also been arrested and charged with rape or charge of alleged sexual assault in the video.

He added that another person arrested late on Tuesday had not yet been questioned.

Police in both countries said they were all Bangladeshi citizens.

Ridoy was one of those in the custody of Bengaluru authorities, Daca police added.

Shahidullah said that since TikTok became popular in Bangladesh in 2019, such gangs have been formed to attract teenagers from low-income families.

They would be invited to pool parties, star in TikTok videos and “sell well-paid salary dreams in call centers, sales and service centers,” he added.