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 recently. 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. 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. 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.
