Police recapture fraud suspects
PHUKET: Two foreign suspects with alleged links to a passport forgery network who fled from a police station in Phuket before being taken to court were recaptured on Saturday night, police said.
Sandeep Singh, 30, and Raj Kumar, 36 — both Indian nationals — were apprehended at an Otop market in Patong just hours after breaking free from custody at Sakhu police station in Thalang district.
They were arrested for holding fake passports and handed over from immigration officials at Phuket airport about 5am on Saturday.
They asked to go to a washroom to smoke cigarettes during an interrogation, then fled from the station.
Sakhu police station is a newly constructed police station and has no cells. It serves Sakhu subdistrict and Phuket International Airport. Pol Col Jirasak Siamsak, superintendent of Sakhu station, said yesterday police received an alert from an informant who spotted the duo in front of a seafood restaurant in Patong and took the pictures for confirmation.
All police stations were told to hunt down the suspects and distribute their photos and information via social media.
The public was urged to send their tips to Sakhu station or call the 24-hour police hotline number 191.
Police examined footage from surveillance cameras in the area to track down the suspects and finally found the men heading to the Otop market where they were nabbed.
The suspects had earlier travelled to South Korea, where officials found they were using fake passports. South Korean authorities then sent them back to Thailand, the place they had originally departed from. Police said the suspects entered the kingdom from Malaysia via a Satun checkpoint using genuine passports and came to Phuket to pick the fake ones they had ordered from India for 1 million baht (2 million rupees) apiece.
They then used the fake Portuguese passports in an attempt to travel to Canada to find cooking jobs.
They were arrested in South Korea and deported to Phuket.
Both were initially charged with possessing and using fake passports and fleeing while being in detention.
Police said they were investigating the network which supplied the suspects fake passports.
Following the suspects’ escape, Pol Maj Gen Teeraphol Thipjaroen, chief of the Phuket police, said a committee would be set up to investigate the officers on duty for alleged negligence.