Bangladesh’s elite security battalion chief has recommended a ban on video-sharing apps like Chinese  TikTok and Likee as they are being used to “conduct criminal activities”, Dhaka Tribune reported.

“Over 80 percent of the country’s internet users access different social media sites, which are somehow to blame for different types of criminal conduct,” Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) Director General Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun said.

His remarks followed recent arrests of suspected members of a sex-trafficking gang that used TikTok to lure young women and girls.

“The dark sides of technology should be avoided. There is no scope for getting away with committing an offense; nobody can do so now. Anyone linked to a crime will face tougher punishment,” Mamun said while addressing an event in Dhaka.

Several rapes and gang-rapes took place in Bangladesh in the past few months when the victims were lured with shooting for TikTok and Likee videos, with the latest known case revealed in Sylhet on Thursday.

Additionally, the law enforcers have recently cracked down on human traffickers after a woman was raped and tortured in India in late May. She was tricked into going to Bengaluru on the pretext of a TikTok video shoot.

So far, seven people, including the mastermind of the crime racket and a female aide have been arrest0ed in Bangladesh over the alleged rape of the 22-year-old woman by Bangladeshis in Bengaluru.

The sex-trafficking gang used video-sharing TikTok to contact and lure young women and girls before selling them for sex in neighboring India and Nepal.

Police said that the suspects said they had trafficked at least 50 women to India in the two years.

(SAM)