Eleven arrested for being suspected members of gang that lured women and girls into India’s intercourse commerce utilizing the social media platform.
No less than 11 folks have been arrested for being suspected members of a Bangladesh trafficking gang that lured women and girls into neighbouring India’s intercourse commerce utilizing the social media platform TikTok, Dhaka police stated.
The gang’s alleged ringleader Rafizul Islam Ridoy – nicknamed TikTok Ridoy – would “lure younger ladies from TikTok and different social media teams, promising to make them TikTok fashions”, Bangladesh’s Fast Motion Battalion (RAB) paramilitary unit stated on Tuesday.
However the victims had been as an alternative smuggled into southern India and compelled into intercourse work, in keeping with a RAB assertion.
The arrests got here after video footage of an alleged sexual assault of a Bangladeshi lady went viral on social media in late Could, prompting an investigation into the gang, the RAB stated.
The suspects had been all detained during the last week.
The most recent arrests got here on Monday when two males had been held in a southwestern border district in Bangladesh for allegedly trafficking women and girls aged between 17 to 22, Dhaka police’s deputy commissioner Mohammad Shahidullah stated.
“Certainly one of them has instructed us that he has despatched 1,000 folks to India,” Shahidullah instructed the AFP information company.
A complete of 9 folks had been arrested in Bangladesh and two others in India’s know-how hub Bengaluru for allegedly being a part of the trafficking gang, police added.
Bengaluru metropolis police commissioner Kamal Pant instructed AFP on Tuesday that 4 different folks had been additionally arrested and accused of rape or abetting the alleged sexual assault proven within the video.
An extra individual arrested late on Tuesday had but to be questioned, he added.
All had been Bangladesh nationals, police in each international locations stated.
Ridoy was a kind of within the custody of Bengaluru authorities, Dhaka police added.
Shahidullah stated that since 2019 when TikTok turned fashionable in Bangladesh, such gangs had sprung up to attract in youngsters from low-income households.
They might be invited to pool events, star in TikTok movies and “bought desires of well-paid salaries in name centres, gross sales and repair centres”, he added.
