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Police have rescued four schoolgirls who went missing from Cumilla after allegedly planning to start a new life with boys they had met on social media, police said on Wednesday.
The girls, three of whom are in Class Five and one in Class Three, are students of Cumilla Police Lines Government Primary School. They were rescued from Chunarughat in Habiganj district.
According to police, the girls left their homes on October 12, telling their families they were going to school.
However, they did not attend classes, prompting the school authorities and their families to alert the police.
Investigators from the District Detective Branch (DB) and Kotwali Police Station examined CCTV footage and circulated information about the missing students to police stations across the country.
During questioning, the girls reportedly said they had developed friendships with several young men through TikTok and other social media platforms. They allegedly planned to live independently, earn their own money and begin a new life with the people they had met online.
Police said the girls took mobile phones and gold ornaments from their homes before leaving. They later sold a family-used Android phone at a mobile phone market in Cumilla for Tk 4,000 and travelled to Dhaka.
Unable to carry out their plan in the capital, they went to the home of one girl’s grandfather in Chunarughat, where police rescued them with the assistance of local police.
The police subsequently recovered the sold mobile phone and the gold ornaments.
Cumilla police said they were also examining whether anyone had influenced the girls to leave home. The identities and addresses of the young men they had met online had not been verified, police added.
Police urged parents to monitor their children’s use of smartphones and social media and maintain regular communication with them.