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DHAKA — 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 the social media platform TikTok, Dhaka police said Tuesday.
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.
But the victims were instead smuggled into southern India and forced into sex work, according to a RAB statement.
The arrests came after video footage of an alleged sexual assault of a Bangladeshi woman went viral on social media in late May, prompting an investigation into the gang, the RAB said.
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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 aged between 17 to 22, Dhaka police’s deputy commissioner Mohammad Shahidullah said.
