The photographs released by Chinese police showed their officers holding a man and a woman in handcuffs in front of a border gate.
They had just been handed over from Myanmar, the latest in scores of arrests of those accused of running scam centres in a town on the north-eastern border with China.
The two were Ming Guoping and Ming Zhenzhen, son and granddaughter of one of the powerful warlords who have run the town of Laukkaing for the past 14 years.
A sudden escalation of the conflict in Myanmar has spelled the end of the Chinese mafia – the Godfather-esque “four families” – in this notoriously lawless border town.
At around the same time as the Chinese police released the photos of the handcuffed pair last Thursday, the official Myanmar military news published a photo of an apparent autopsy being conducted in the back of a van on the body of a 69 year-old man.
It was the warlord himself – Ming Xuechang – who, the military said, had taken his own life after being captured, an explanation greeted with scepticism by many.
It was an ignominious end to an extraordinary story that began in the days of war and revolution, but turned into one of drugs, gambling, greed and Machiavellian rivalry.
Credit: http://bbc.com
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