Yala cop nabbed picking up meth pills
Apolice officer attached to Yala’s special operations unit was arrested and 200,000 speed pills, worth about 24 million baht, seized at Yala railway station on Sunday afternoon.
Pol Cpl Veerayut Changkaew was detained as he arrived at Yala railway station at around 2.40pm on Sunday to pick up a cardboard box containing the illicit drugs.
The officer showed up shortly after a BangkokYala special express train arrived at the station with the box on board, said Hat Yai railway police inspector Pol Lt Col Charnsarawut Saeng-arun, who made the arrest.
The box contained 20 bundles containing 10,000 speed pills each with a total street value of 24 million baht, police said.
Pol Cpl Veerayut told investigators that a military ranger friend based in Narathiwat province had offered him 100,000 baht to collect the box from the train from Bangkok, but did not tell him what was inside.
He said he only found out it contained drugs when he was arrested as he picked it up.
Pol Lt Col Charnsarawut said a male passenger had boarded the train with the box at Bang Sue railway station in Bangkok.
When the Yala-bound train arrived at Thung Song railway station in Nakhon Si Thammarat, the man got off the train, leaving the box on a seat in a second-class carriage.
Hat Yai railway police and volunteers became suspicious when they saw the box had been left unattended. On opening the box, which had a label saying it contained a television, they discovered it was actually full of pills, the Hat Yai railway police inspector said.
The officers stayed with the box until the train reached Yala railway station and kept a close watch for who would come to pick it up.
Pol Lt Col Charnsarawut said he would coordinate with other agencies to widen the investigation, believing the apparent involvement of a police officer and a soldier serving in the deep South suggested it was the work of a major drug smuggling gang.