In the latest in a string of trafficking busts involving Cambodian women bound for arranged marriages in China, a woman was charged on Saturday by Kandal provincial court after being caught allegedly taking four women to the airport for that purpose.

Colonel Ros Sarin, chief of the provincial Anti-Human Trafficking and Juvenile Protection Unit, said that Ly Bona, 33, had been charged under the Kingdom’s suppression of human trafficking law with the act of selling, buying or exchanging a person for cross-border transfer.

“She was arrested … on Friday afternoon while she was bringing four women, ages 19 to 30, by tuk-tuk from [Kandal’s] Lovea Em district to Phnom Penh International Airport in order to board a plane leaving for China.”

He told the Post yesterday that another female suspect, aged 49, escaped during the bust.

The four women have been sent back to their homes.

Neither Ly Bona nor her defence lawyer could be reached for comment yesterday.