Thai police uncovered secret tunnel in manhunt for elderly monk
BANGKOK: Thai cops have uncovered secret tunnels running underneath a space-age temple of the controversial Dhammakaya Buddhist sect, as their manhunt for an elusive elderly monk accused of massive embezzlement entered a second day.
Thousands of officers are involved in the search for the 72-year- old monk Phra Dhammachayo, who is believed to be holed up in the vast Wat Dhammakaya temple grounds on the outskirts of Bangkok.
The former abbot, who founded the breakaway Buddhist order in 1970 and has marshalled its prodigious rise, is accused of money laundering and accepting embezzled funds worth US$ 33 million from the jailed owner of a cooperative bank.
But in an increasingly bizarre cat- and- mouse game, cops were frustrated for a second day running as they were led by orange- robed monks through endless rooms and hallways in the 1,000- acre site.
On Thursday police found a 1.5 kilometre tunnel – spilt into two routes – dug under the UFO-like temple that dominates the site, which may have been used by the ex- abbot as a place to hide. “It only has one entrance but it does not go outside of the temple,” Police Colonel Worranan Srilum, deputy spokesman for the DSI – Thailand’s equivalent of the FBI – told reporters. They also searched a sick bay used by the former abbot, but instead of finding their quarry, pulled back an orange robe covering several pillows arranged to look like a sleeping person.
“The Dhammakaya temple area is sprawling so it will have to take time to search... we can’t find him yet, but our intelligence insists that he is still inside (the) temple,” he added.