‘Dance Club’ Racket: 2 traffickers arrested

The Rapid Action Battalion arrested two members of a trafficking racket from the capital's Karail slum area early yesterday.

The arrestees are – Sujon Shikder (21), and Ramzan Mollah (26). Another suspect – Hossain from Narail – is on the run.

Their targets were usually young women, mostly from families belonging to lower-income groups.

"The traffickers faked love affairs with the girls to lure them into the trafficking trap. They would also marry them by verbal agreements without proper paperwork, capture their intimate photos and then traffic them to India," said ASP (Operations Officer) Noman Ahmed of Rab-1.

One of the arrestees,

Sujon, married three women this way and sold one of them off to India, according to Noman. Two more women whom they were planning to traffic were eventually rescued by Rab officials.

"One of the girls whom Sujon married and trafficked to India is now at a dance bar in Mumbai," he said.

They would take Tk 28,000 in advance from the Indian syndicate for each woman trafficked and traffic them through the Jashore border.

According to Rab's information, the racket has four to five members in its Indian syndicate.

"One of them is a Bangladeshi woman who got married to an Indian national and is currently living there," said the Rab official.

"We are trying to catch the other members of the racket, including the kingpins," he added.