Police crackdown over trafficking, torturing woman in Bengaluru continues

Police are continuing drives to arrest the members of a transnational gang involved in trafficking young girls using TikTok and forcing them into prostitution in India, said sources.

Sources said in the last two days Hatirjheel police took three victims, who returned from India, into their custody and picked up at least four men following an investigation into the trafficking racket.

Wishing to remain anonymous, a police official said they are conducting drives taking the victims with them and also interrogating the people who were close to Hridoy Babu, the prime accused in the human trafficking case filed with Hatirjheel police station.

A relative of one of the victims said Hridoy lured her sister-in-law, a 15-year-old girl, along with four other girls to the South Indian city Bengaluru promising her a well-paid job.

Traffickers took them into India through the Sathkhira border three months ago and tortured and forced them into prostitution there.

The victims were able to flee the Indian state and return to Bangladesh recently, said the victim's relative.

He also said a law enforcement agency picked up the girl from her home in Hatirjheel on Thursday night, interrogated her and released her on the next day.

Then, on Friday night, Hatirjheel police took her into custody, said sources.

When contacted for comments regarding the matter, Md Shahidullah, deputy commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (Tejgaon Division), refused to reveal any details and said the investigation is going on.

After a video clip of a 22-year-old woman being tortured and sexually assaulted went viral on social media, Indian police on Thursday arrested Hridoy Babu along with five other Bangladeshis from Bengaluru.

Bangladesh police also began an investigation into the matter and found that a transnational racket involving some Bangladeshis has been trafficking young girls using TikTok and forced them into prostitution in India.

On Saturday, the deputy commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (Tejgaon Division) said some criminals from the south-western region of Bangladesh and several Indian states are involved in the gang. Its network is stretched out to Dubai, UAE and some other countries in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, relatives of two suspects seen in the video claimed that two among the five accused who brutally tortured and assaulted the woman are from Jashore.

One of the men – Alamin, 24, is from Chanchra Madhyapara area of Jashore and a young woman Tania, 22, is from Nawapara of Abhaynagar upazila.