Trapped through TikTok

"We are in danger. Please save us!"

Siam* received a phone call via IMO on January 29 night.

The voice sounded familiar. It was his sister 15-year-old Sabrina.

"Some unidentified people have confined us to a bordering district after kidnapping us from Dhaka. They will traffic us abroad. They are torturing us," she cried.

And then, Sabrina abruptly disconnected the call. Just before the call ended, Siam heard a male voice shouting, "Hang up now."

This was the last time Sabrina's family heard from her. They don't know if she is dead or alive.

Sabrina's childhood took a dark turn when she joined TikTok four years back.

In TikTok, she met Shaon, a human-haulier driver by profession, who was around 20 years old. Soon, they developed a relationship and got married. She was 13 at that time.

Within a year, she gave birth to a boy, who is now nine months old.

The story of Sabrina's friend Sejuti, 14, is almost similar. She also married a boy named Sabuj after meeting him through TikTok at the age of 12. They got separated within a year.

On January 23 this year, Sabrina and Sejuti left their Dhaka homes but they never returned. They were leaving to make video contents, according to their parents.

Meanwhile, Sabrina left her son to her mother before leaving.

Little did they know that a syndicate of organ traffickers had laid out a perfect trap for them. The two were taken to a bordering area.

Sabrina's mother Sharmin filed a case with Hazaribagh Police Station on January 29, the last time the family heard from her.

While investigating the case, the Ramna division of the Detective Branch of police arrested a trafficker -- Kabir Hossain-- on February 6.

Sabrina and Sejuti are not alone.

The minors were preyed on by a transnational trafficking gang who has trafficked at least over a 100 underaged girls to India via Satkhira within a year.

What's more perplexing, their organs were sold to Middle Eastern countries.

The Daily Star on February 9 published a report on the issue, headlined "They trafficked people for organs".

The organs of minors are always in high demand for its sustainability, and hence children are being targeted by this group, said an investigator.

NOT RESCUED YET

Police have failed to make any breakthrough about Sabrina and Sejuti's whereabouts.

Muhammad Fazle Elahi, an additional deputy commissioner of DB (Ramna division), told The Daily Star yesterday, "We have got details of five to six members of the trafficking syndicate. We are now conducting drives to arrest them."

"Once the gang members are arrested, we can trace the victims," he said.

Gang members primarily lure girls with promises of better job opportunities on social media and online platforms such as TikTok before trafficking them abroad, said police.

FAMILIES WAIT IN ANGUISH

Tears fell like unspoken prayers in both homes.

In Sabrina's tiny house, her nine-month-old boy was found crying for his mother.

His grandmother, Sharmin, wiped tears while clinging to her phone. She keeps her phone around all the time, hoping it might ring any moment with information for her missing daughter.

Her ailing husband remained silent, the weight of poverty heavy on his shoulders.

Across town, Sejuti's mother, a homemaker, shared her despair. "We don't even know where to seek help to know about my daughter."

TIKTOK AND TRAFFICKING

This is not the first case where traffickers targeted girls on TikTok.

In February last year, a Bangladeshi girl named -- Tumpa Akter -- was killed in India's Gujrat after being trafficked.

The abductors targeted her through TikTok

Using TikTok to single out girls first came to light in June 2021, after Bangladeshi law enforcers arrested over two dozen people.

Police then said these gangs have trafficked several hundred girls using the platform.

The gang members targeted girls from low-income families, who often posted videos online, luring them with invitations to parties or false promises of jobs in call centers, sales, and service centres.

Ultimately, these girls were transported to border districts, where they were confined and subjected to sexual harassment, and then trafficked to India and other countries.

(*Names of victims and their family members have been changed to protect their identities.)