Raped, assaulted, locked up in foreign land

Many cannot even imagine the brutalities an 18-year-old girl endured for more than two months.

Saima (not her real name) yesterday recounted to The Daily Star her horrid tale of going from making TikTok videos to becoming a prey of human trafficking and being physically, sexually assaulted and raped in a foreign land. 

When she was not being abused, she was locked in a tiny dark room for days without food.

Saima is one of three Bangladeshi victims, aged between 18 and 25, who managed to flee from the clutches of the trafficking racket in India. She came back to Bangladesh 77 days after being trafficked to India.

Saima was introduced to Rifadul Islam Ridoy, known as Ridoy Babo on TikTok, in the capital's Hatirjheel through a friend in March 2019.

In February and September 2020, Ridoy took her to a TikTok hangout and a pool party at resorts in Gazipur and Narayanganj, where 700-800 young girls and boys participated.

This year, on February 15, telling her that they were going to another hangout in Kushtia, Ridoy took her to Satkhira, a transit point for trafficking to India, and kept her in a house there.

On February 19, she was trafficked to India and the ordeal began. Saima was kept in a house in Bashirhat in West Bengal and was first raped there. The syndicate captured video of it and later used it to blackmail her.

Having forged an Indian national identification card for her, the syndicate then took her by air from Kolkata to Bengaluru, where she was locked up for 10 days in a house in Anandapura circle. She was tortured physically until she agreed to do sex work.

It was at that house that she met Rinky (not her real name), the video of whose brutal torture and sexual assault had gone viral recently. A few days later, Rinky was sent to a hotel in Hyderabad.

Saima herself was taken to a hotel in Chennai.

"On the first day, I was forced to have sex with 19 people," she said in tears.

After six days at the hotel, Saima fell ill and was taken back to the house in Anandapura, where she again met Ridoy, and four more girls freshly trafficked from Dhaka.

She said she met around 20 to 30 Bangladeshi girls at that house and the Chennai hotel.

"We were only allowed to go out of their house if we agreed to sex work."

On March 27, Ridoy wanted to have a physical relationship with one of the girls, and when Saima protested, Ridoy hit her on the head with a liquor bottle.

Speaking to Rinky -- who was in Hyderabad -- over the phone, Saima sought her help to escape. Rinky told Saima that if she and two other girls could get to Kerala, Rinky could help them as she has connections there. In that case, she would also escape from the Hyderabad hotel and go to Kerala.

The two others fled the Bengaluru house on May 3 but Saima stayed back because of illness. A day later, she managed to flee her captors while they were taking her to the Chennai hotel. Saima finally reached Bangladesh on May 7 by paying brokers Tk 30,000 at the border.

Once she was back, she got a message from Ridoy. It was the video of Rinky being tortured and sexually abused. Ridoy said if they do not obey him, such videos of hers would be made public.

"I uploaded the video hoping to get justice so that the assaulters get arrested," Saima said.

Hafiz Al Faruk, additional deputy commissioner of Tejgaon Division Police, told The Daily Star yesterday that the transnational syndicate of the South-western region of Bangladesh and several Indian states have mainly used the social media app TikTok as a platform for human trafficking.

"We have identified a significant number of TikTok groups, admins of these groups, and some active members in common of these groups, whose activities are suspicious. Legal action will be taken against all those involved in trafficking," said Faruk, who is supervising investigation of the case.