SHILLONG:
A day after the West Garo Hills police busted an alleged sex racket in a farmhouse owned by state vice-president of Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Bernard Marak, the Tura Member of District Council (MDC) has claimed that he was not evading arrest but had moved to Guwahati for “safety” reasons as the police were plotting to kill him.
“The NPP and Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma has conspired against the BJP by targeting me because I have won from his seat in the heart of Garo Hills where tribals, both Christians and non-Christians, had voted for the BJP. I have become a threat to the chief minister in his own constituency after winning the Garo Hills Autonomous District Council (GHADC) election which covers four MLA areas,” he said.
He also alleged that Meghalaya Police is plotting to “gun him down”. “I had the information that they are trying to implicate me and if possible, gun me down. So, I had to move out of Shillong and come to Guwahati,” he said, asserting that he is not evading arrest, but is taking time to “bring out the truth”.
“All these allegations that I am running a brothel and a prostitution racket are totally wrong and are conspiracies. All these have been made up by the state police. Even the things that were seized from my farm, most of it are staged,” he said.
Marak said that the minors who were rescued from his farm are actually students who sponsored by him.
“In that farm, I am keeping not less than 9 to 10 students and helping them to study. There has been no harassment meted to them. But the police have come to my farm again and again and created fear psychosis, and this time they have gone to the extreme,” he said.
He said the police are trying to “dig out” old cases which were not even related to him. He said they are also taking out JCB and are trying to destroy the houses and shops which are a livelihood to many people in that area.