Promised better future, teen trafficked, tortured to death in Dubai

Auto-rickshaw driver Jahangir struggled to pay his family's expenses even though his wife supplemented his income by working at houses in the capital's Jatrabari.

His neighbour, Sohagi alias Riya, offered a way to ease their hardship. In 2023, she approached the couple with a job opportunity for their 17-year-old daughter at a hospital in Dubai, which Sohagi said would pay an attractive salary.

The couple believed that sending their daughter abroad would turn their forunes around, and so they took Tk 3 lakh loan, gave the money to Sohagi and her Dubai expat sister Farjana to facilitate the teenager's journey to the middle eastern country.

But instead of giving her a job in Dubai as promised, the sisters trafficked her and sold her into sex slavery in August last year.

Amid severe torture, the girl died in less than a month.

Maj Abdur Rakib, deputy director of Rab-3, revealed the information today, after arresting Sohagi, 30, and Farzana, 35, from Jatrabari last night.

The victim's father filed a case naming the two as accused with Jatrabari Police Station in December, the official said.

"They offered the girl a job as a cleaner at a hospital, but they sold her to a brothel in Dubai," he told The Daily Star.

As part of their plan to traffic her, Sohagi had managed a passport for the victim with a fake address in Narayanganj and also a tourist visa. They sent her to Dubai on August 16, 2023.

"Two days later, they sold her to a gang which forced her into prostitution. She was brutally tortured there and died on September 8," Maj Rakib said.

Failing to contact their daughter, the parents asked Sohagi about her, and the accused told them that their daughter was doing well and would contact them whenever she became free, the official said.

The family came to know about the ordeal and death of the girl after a Bangladeshi expatriate in Dubai posted photos of the body taken at the Bangladeshi embassy, her passport and other information.

Quoting the arrestees, the Rab official said Farzana went to Dubai in March 2023 but returned home in January this year after the death of the girl.

Since then, Farjana and Sohagi have been in hiding.