Public Shame

The other day we were walking in the bazaar when we began to hear a lot of noise and people all looking in the same direction. The commotion was coming quicker and we couldn't figure out what was going on. We finally pushed ourselves to the edge of the road and saw a group of policemen coming with a large group of people behind them. The people the police were escorting looked like they had been rounded up like a herd of cattle. As a group (about 20 people) they were lassoed together in a rope and all walking together. In the front were men who all had blank ink smired on their faces and clothes. They also had their hands tied together with rope. In the back of the herd were women. It was another one of those instances where we had absolutely no idea what was going on. We asked the ever helpful, "Kya hua?" (what happened) to a few people. We were able to piece together that it was group that was caught drinking alcohol in a hotel as well as some potential prostitution activities. They were being publicly shamed by being paraded through the busiest part of town.