Drug syndicates using rented houses in border towns to store drugs

BANGKOK: Drug syndicates are using rented houses in towns near the Thai-Malaysia border to store their drugs before smuggling their “precious goods” across the border into Malaysia.

This was revealed in investigations following last week’s arrest of three Malaysian drug couriers at a rented house in Sadao district, opposite Kedah’s Bukit Kayu Hitam, where 421kg of cannabis was stored.

“They (the three Malaysians) rented the house to store the drugs. They planned to smuggle smaller amounts of the drugs into Malaysia, in packages between 50 to 100kg,” Region 9 deputy police chief Maj Gen Daoloi Muendech told Bernama recently.

The Region 9 area of responsibility covers most of the provinces in southern Thailand.

From towns near the ThaiMalaysian border, said Daoloi, the drug couriers would make several trips across the border into Malaysia to bring the drugs to a waiting party.

The syndicates, he said, thought smuggling the drugs in smaller amounts would make it easier for them to slip through the tight surveillance mounted by the authorities of both countries at the border.

Thailand’s anti-narcotics officers have disclosed to Bernama several methods employed by syndicates to smuggle drugs into Malaysia, commonly by hiding it in secret compartments within the vehicles.

Syndicates have been known to creatively modify the vehicles used in their smuggling attempts, equipping them with “hard to detect” hidden compartments to store the drugs for their trip across the border.

Bernama was informed that Thai anti-narcotics officers have been intensifying their intelligence gathering in border towns to uncover rented houses used by drug syndicates to store their drugs.

Meanwhile, Daoloi said one of the Malaysians arrested had confessed to the crime but the other two denied any knowledge of the drugs.

“One of them acknowledged to being a drug smuggler and had done it many times before this,” he said, adding that the police had kept the syndicate under surveillance for several months.

The three Malaysians, including a woman aged 23 years, are still being detained by Thai police to facilitate further investigations.