PUBLISHED : 23 Feb 2024 at 13:05
Police have arrested 10 suspected drug couriers in three major drug cases in Chiang Rai province with 1.8 million methamphetamine pills and assets worth 10 million baht seized.
In the first case, police manning Pukaeng road checkpoint in Phan district pulled over a suspicious pickup truck with Bangkok license plates. During the search, the officers found 200,000 speed pills hidden inside the vehicle.
The driver, identified as Sutthiphong, confessed he had been hired to smuggle the drugs from Chiang Rai’s Mae Yao district to deliver to a drug agent in the South, said Pol Lt Gen Kritthaphon Yisakhorn, commissioner of the Provincial Police Region 5 during a media briefing on Friday. He did not give the surname of the 29-year-old Nakhon Si Thammarat native.
In the second case, a police patrol from Chiang Rai’s Muang station searched a car with Bangkok license plates at a road checkpoint in tambon Robwiang and found 600,000 meth pills inside the vehicle, said Pol Lt Gen Kritthaphon.
The driver, identified only as Suthin, a 29-year-old native of Chiang Rai, told police that he had been hired to smuggle the drugs from tambon Wae Yao of Muang district of this northern province to deliver to another courier at Lan Muang market in Muang district of this northern province.
In the third case, a combined team of local police in Chiang Rai and officers from relevant agencies spotted four suspected pickup trucks travelling along the same route in tambon Therd Thai of Mae Fa Luang district to avoid road checkpoints. The team followed and managed to intercept the four vehicles at tambon Doi Lan in Muang district.
They searched the pickup trucks and found speed pills were hidden in secret compartments of the vehicles, each carrying more than 200,000 pills or about 1 million pills in total. Eight suspects were arrested.
The Provincial Police Region 5 commissioner said authorities have extended the investigations that led to the seizure of assets worth about 10 million baht from the suspects in the three major cases and their alleged accomplices.