Bangladesh law-enforcement agencies have arrested 11 members of a gang who were luring girls into sex trade using TikTok and other social media platforms.
The gang promised girls to make them TikTok models, but they were then smuggled across the border to India and forced into sex, Bangladesh’s Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) paramilitary unit said in a statement on Tuesday.
An arrested gang member told the police that he has sent more than 1,000 people to India, Dhaka police’s deputy commissioner Mohammad Shahidullah told AFP.
The gang was primarily using TikTok to lure girls. In fact, the gang’s ringleader Rafizul Islam Ridoy is nicknamed TikTok Ridoy.
All the 11 arrests have been made over the last week. Two of them were detained on Monday when they were allegedly trafficking girls and women aged between 17 and 22, the police said.
The police and other law-enforcement agencies sprang into action in late May after video showing sexual assault of a Bangladeshi woman went viral on social media platforms.
Nine arrests were made in Bangladesh while two gang members were arrested in Bengaluru, a city known for being India’s technology hub. However, all the detainees are Bangladeshi nationals.
Ringleader Ridoy is also among those arrested in Bengaluru.
The Bengaluru police have also arrested four other people for allegedly raping or abetting the sexual assault shown in the video.
Another person has been taken into police custody, but he had yet to be questioned, the police said.
The Dhaka police said that gangs like these have been operating since 2019 when TikTok gained popularity.
Teenagers from low-income families are the primary target of such trafficking gangs. The criminals lured these girls by promising handsome salaries call centers or to perform in TikTok videos, but they were then used for sex trade.
Sex trafficking
According to estimates, nearly 4.8 million people are trapped in forced sexual exploitation globally.
Nonprofit organization Shared Hope International defines sex trafficking as: “Sex trafficking occurs when someone uses force, fraud or coercion to cause a commercial sex act with an adult or causes a minor to commercial sex act.
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