Police are continuing their investigations into Rimpu Bagan, the farmhouse owned by Tura MDC Bernard N Marak, which the authorities claim was being run as a brothel.
Seventy-three people were detained by police in Friday’s raid and are being produced before the court “in batches”. Twenty-six of those detained are women and one is a 15-year-old minor.
Marak is one of the fiercest critics of the Meghalaya Democratic Alliance government and is thought to be considering a run against Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma in the South Tura constituency at next year’s state elections. He and the Bharatiya Janata Party, of which he is a state vice-president, claim that the raid was the result of a political vendetta.
Besides the arrests, police found large amounts of alcohol, hundreds of unused condoms and children kept in “dingy” conditions. Police believe that the farmhouse was the place where a minor girl had been raped repeatedly earlier this year. The police described the building as a brothel, claiming that many youngsters were openly drinking in various states of undress when the raid took place.
The police are continuing to investigate “what other crimes were going on in the camp.”
The property has been sealed. At the time of filing this report no arrest warrant has been issued against Marak. However, on the day of the raid, he was instructed to report to Sadar police station in Shillong. He declined to do so, saying today that he was afraid that the police would kill him in a fake encounter.
