Former police colonel Suphat Laohawatana, who was convicted by a Thai court in May 2015 for the murder of a Myanmar migrant farm worker in Petchaburi, has been arrested near Myawady after more than a year in hiding, according to police sources.
The convicted murderer previously worked as a doctor at the Police General Hospital in Bangkok owned an orchard in Petchaburi.
In late 2012, Sawang Numjui, the owner of a pineapple plantation in Phetchaburi, told Thai police that a pick-up truck belonging to his son Samart Numjui and daughter-in-law Orasa Kerdsap, who had disappeared in 2009, had been found at an abandoned house belonging to Suphat.
Sawang said he believed his son and daughter-in-law had been killed.
Police searched Suphat’s office and orchard and found a large cache of guns and ammunition. They also saw several undocumented immigrants from Myanmar working on the orchard. While digging in the orchard, police also found three human skeletons, one of which had a gunshot wound through the skull.
A DNA test revealed that the remains belonged to a Myanmar migrant worker known as Eta. A Thai court later learned that Eta was killed because he had an intimate relationship with Suphat’s wife.
Another Myanmar worker on the orchard said he’d been tortured by Suphat and forced to help bury the bodies of other workers.
Suphat and his two sons, Ake and Akara, were charged and convicted for Eta’s murder. However, Suphat fled and did not show up to his sentencing hearing in May 2015. He and his son Ake were sentenced to death. Akara was sentenced to life in prison, but the sentence was commuted to 25 years and three months since was only 19 years old when the crime was committed.
After more than a year of hunting Suphat, Phetchaburi police located him by following a former employee of the police doctor across the border from Mae Sot into Myawady.
Royal Thai Police Commissioner-General Chakthip Chaijinda contact Myanmar police, who arrested the fugitive murder convict.
DVB reports:
Suphat was detained with a large amount of cash at a house near the Thailand-Myanmar border and has been charged with illegal entry and possession of a fake Myanmar ID card.
Myanmar authorities plan to indict Suphat on December 28 in the the Mawlamyine provincial court before deporting him to Thailand.
Chakthip, however, said Wednesday he had never received any reports about Suphat’s arrest from Myanmar.
The Bangkok Post, on the other hand, reports that Myanmar police have already taken Suphat to the Singkhon border crossing in Prachuap Khiri Khan Province, where they handed him over to Thai police.
This seems unlikely, however, since that border crossing is much further from the place where Suphat was arrested than the Myawady crossing is. Furthermore, if he has been charged with illegal entry, he may face several years in prison in Myanmar.
Myanmar authorities said Suphat had crossed into country illegally through the Three Pagodas Pass in Kanchanaburi. They said he had kept a low profile until his arrest and had married a Myanmar woman.
