Rima (pseudonym) left Bagerhat for Dhaka around six months ago to work as a domestic help and support her three-year-old son.
Instead, the 19-year-old says she was forced to take drugs, threatened with compromising videos, married off to a Chinese man and trafficked to China, where she was repeatedly tortured.
She returned to Bangladesh on August 4 with support from Justice and Care, an international organisation combating modern slavery and human trafficking.
Rima, who studied till the sixth grade and previously worked at a jute mill, said a distant female relative brought her to Dhaka promising domestic work in Baridhara, but instead kept her at an Uttar Badda flat with her family.
After a few days, she alleged, the woman forced her to take yaba and, once she became dependent, controlled how much she received.
“They told me I would stop thinking about my son and would not cry so much,” Rima said, adding that videos of her taking drugs were later used to pressure her into marrying a Chinese man.
A Bangladeshi intermediary she identified as Ador took her to Jamuna Future Park to meet the man, Wang Zhen Zhen. Her passport was arranged, she was taken to the Chinese embassy and later made to sign papers at a Dhaka coffee shop.
Around a month later, she was taken to Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport, where, she alleged, a person in a blue uniform escorted her and another Bangladeshi woman to a bus bound for the aircraft. She could neither identify him nor his agency.
In China, the man kept her at a hotel for three days before taking her to his family home, where she was initially treated well until her visa was extended for six months.
“One night, they tied my hands and feet and took me away in the dark, like cattle,” she said, alleging she was held at another house for around 20 days, beaten and sexually abused. After a week back at the family home, she was sent there again for another 10 to 12 days.
Her phone was confiscated when she tried to contact people in Bangladesh. She later pretended to accept the situation and regained access to a handset.
Messages on her Chinese husband’s phones indicated Tk 2.5 lakh had been paid to Ador to arrange the marriage, she claimed, while the traffickers demanded Tk 3.5 lakh from her family to send her home.
During a doctor’s visit, she slipped away while the man accompanying her was at reception and ran to a restaurant, where she showed staff screenshots with Chinese translations of threats and photographs of her injuries. They called emergency services.
Chinese police recovered her passport and bought her a ticket to Beijing. Although she obtained a local phone, she could not communicate with those around her as they spoke Chinese. She then contacted Justice and Care, which helped her return to Bangladesh.
The case comes amid growing concern over Bangladeshi women being trafficked to China through allegedly arranged marriages.
Mostafizur Rahman, additional superintendent of the Criminal Investigation Department’s Trafficking in Persons unit, said he was handling four China-related trafficking cases, while several others had been filed with Airport, Gabtoli, Uttara, Dakshinkhan and Uttarkhan police stations.
“The Chinese embassy told us that more than 1,100 family visas were issued for China in 2025. We estimate at least 600 recipients may have already travelled there.
“Stopping such travel is difficult when apparently valid marriage and visa documents are presented. The women often do not understand the risks before travelling.”
Shariful Hasan, associate director of BRAC’s Migration and Youth Platform, said no formal figure existed, but such cases had been reported frequently over the past year and a half.
He called for verifying the identity and marital status of Chinese nationals seeking to marry Bangladeshi women. He also urged immigration and police to determine how many such women had travelled to China, returned or remained there, and contact the families of those who had not returned.
A petition filed by Rima’s mother with the Khulna Human Trafficking Offence Tribunal on August 2 named seven accused, including alleged Bangladeshi intermediaries and Chinese national Wang Zhen, alleging deception, forced drug use, sexual exploitation, coerced marriage and trafficking.
Speaking to this correspondent recently, investigating officer Mohammad Nizamuddin of the Khulna Police Bureau of Investigation said evidence, including records of Rima’s return, was being analysed. “But we still lack a lot of information since the victim’s original cell phone remains in China.”
He said Rima also could not identify the uniformed person she claimed had helped her at HSIA. No one had been arrested as of 8:00pm yesterday.
Previous media reports show at least six Chinese nationals were arrested between January 2025 and July 2026 over alleged fraudulent cross-border marriage syndicates.
They included Zeng Fan and Zin Suchun, arrested in a joint Rab-police raid in Uttara in March 2026 over allegations of confining and abusing young women before taking them to China. In December 2024, APBn arrested two Chinese nationals after a 21-year-old woman escaped suspected traffickers at the Dhaka airport.
In a July 14 notice, the Chinese embassy in Dhaka warned its citizens against illegal marriage brokers in Bangladesh, saying “bride-buying” arrangements could lead to trafficking, extortion, threats, physical harm and financial losses.
Justice and Care Country Director Mohammed Tariqul Islam said Rima’s return underscored the need for timely cross-border cooperation, stronger investigations and greater awareness in vulnerable communities.
Contacted recently, Chu Guang, counsellor at the Chinese embassy in Bangladesh, said family visa applicants undergo multi-stage verification, including authenticated marriage certificates, one-on-one interviews and a signed letter of commitment, to ensure marriages are genuine and applicants are travelling voluntarily.
He said the embassy works with Bangladesh Police Headquarters, including the Special Branch, and the foreign ministry, but most trafficking complaints it knew of came through media reports rather than government agencies.
Rejecting suggestions that Chinese authorities facilitated trafficking, Chu said Chinese and Bangladeshi marriage brokers appeared to be behind many suspicious cases, arranging marriages and documentation in what appeared to be a lucrative business.
“We encourage the Bangladesh police to crack down on those intermediaries because those are the criminal groups behind this issue,” he said, adding that the embassy had no law-enforcement jurisdiction in Bangladesh and relied on local authorities to investigate and arrest suspects.
Chu further said, “The Chinese side has a very strong position on human trafficking and related criminal activities…. We have zero tolerance for any criminal activities by Chinese citizens in Bangladesh.”
