Ex-nun must pay B57m, court rules

The Supreme Court has upheld a primary court’s verdict ordering former nun Bongkot Sitthipol and her associate to pay 57 million baht with annual interest of 7.5% to be collected since 1991 for damages the pair caused during their encroachment on forest reserve in Kanchanaburi.

The two women, who were arrested in 1998, have already served jail terms of more than three years each but still faced a lawsuit filed by the Royal Forest Department after they were found guilty of illegally building a pagoda complex on a 520-rai block of land in forests in Wang Yai and Mae Nam Noi forests in Sai Yok district.

On June 15 this year, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of the department, ordering Bongkot, together with Pimpan Rattanaprueksanont, to jointly pay “57,709,819.84 baht with 7.5% interest calculated since Jan 1, 1999.”

Department chief Chonlatid Suraswadi earlier asked the court to order them to pay 78 million baht with interest.

Deputy department chief Atthaphon Charoenchansa said he believed Bongkot had left Thailand to live in a foreign country.

But this will not hinder authorities’ duty to demand money from them, he insisted. Forestry officials will work with the Legal Execution Department to complete the job.

Their wrongdoing came under the spotlight after villagers complained against Bongkot for taking a plot of temple land owned by Wat Chong Khaep in Sai Yok district to apply for a land title deed under her name.

The case led to the investigation of an area in the forests which she and her followers called “apaiyatan,” or no-harm-toanimals zone, which housed an 80-metre marble pagoda and 35 other buildings.

The pagoda, with a top decorated with gold, was said to be valued at more than one billion baht.

In 2005, the Criminal Court in 2005 sentenced Bongkot and Pimpan to five years in jail for trespassing on protected forests but reduced their jail terms to three years and nine months for Bongkot and three years and four months for Pimpan after they cooperated.

Meanwhile, Ronnaphop Khatchakhat, chief of Phu Ruea National Park in Loei, has been transferred to an inactive post while being probed into his alleged involvement in illegally building weirs in the park and making false reports.