The man was 165 centimetres tall and had black hair and full set of teeth, he said. The autopsy indicated that he had undergone surgery to have his appendix removed.

There was tape on his arms, suggesting he was bound, but no contusions on his body which led them to believe he was not beaten to death, he said.

The body parts could have been chopped up with a heavy-duty saw and could have been dumped into the river in the area between Phatum Thani and Nonthaburi, which is not far way from the killing location, he added.

The police are continuing their investigation to determine his identity and are studying previous similar cases to compare the methods and see if it resembled any other murders.

Chakarin earlier said that relatives of missing Chinese journalist Li Xin have contacted the Chinese Embassy to Bangkok to verify whether the found dead man was him.

However his wife He Fangmei said the journalist has reappeared in mainland China and was being held by police at an undisclosed location, according to The Guardian.

Li Xin, a former journalist at the Southern Metropolis Daily newspaper, lost contact since early January as he prepared to travel from Thailand to Laos.

Crowe was riding on the elephant with his 16-year-old stepdaughter, Eilidh Hughes, and a local guide on the resort island of Samui in Surat Thani province when the animal turned violent.

The handler climbed down from the pachyderm and was taking their photos when it shook both foreigners to the ground. It then trampled the father and gored him with a tusk. He died at the scene, and his daughter was injured.

Tourism Minister Kobkarn Wattanavrangkul said she had assigned her ministry to look into the details of the incident and report back on whether the family of the Briton would be provided with compensation.

Surat Thani Governor Wongsasiri Promchana held an urgent meeting of authorities concerned, including tourism and livestock offices, to examine the regulations and rules concerning use of elephants for tourism purposes.

They will also jointly investigate the incident, the governor said.

Island Safari Tour has suspended its trekking service for tourists pending investigation.

Wongsasiri ordered a check of the number of animals in five elephant camps in the province and found that the number registered by the livestock offices of Surat Thani province and Koh Samuidistrict did not match.

The Koh Samui office put the number at 38 while the Surat Thani office’s number was 63. The governor said he would find out why the numbers differed.

According to an initial interrogation of the mahout, the elephant, named Golf, appeared to be in musth – a periodic rise in reproductive hormones – a few days ago and during the day when the incident happened, the weather was hot, which might have put the animal under stress.

Meanwhile Wannasiri Morakul, deputy permanent secretary of the Tourism and Sports Ministry, said the incident on Koh Samui underlined the concerns about safety standards for tourists.

The Tourism Department has issued standards for adventure tourism and elephant camps, but the problem is that the ministry has no authority to enforce them. “Now the operators apply the standards if they want to,” she said.

Meanwhile national police chief Pol General Chakthip Chaijinda said he already knew which senior police officer had pressured the case investigators to release the impounded cars to a business operator, but he declined to elaborate pending further investigation.

A source at the Metropolitan Police Bureau’s investigation team said 204 cars worth Bt60 million that had been impounded since November by Thung Song Hong police from a local mall’s parking lot were mostly vehicles pawned by punters in Tak’s Mae Sot border district gambling dens.

Many of these automobiles were also involved in leasing issues because their owners had failed to continue making payments to their car-finance providers.

Pressure from working on this vehicle-seizure case was allegedly a factor that drove Pol Captain Thawee Meunrak to shoot himself to death last week, besides personal problems.

A fact-finding panel on Thawee’s suicide, set up by Metropolitan Police Area 2 chief Pol Maj-General Charoen Srisalak, is expected to conclude its findings this Friday for submission to the city police chief.

The investigation into the car-seizure case initially found that a wealthy used-car dealer in Bangkok’s Lak Si district, referred to as “Sia Meng”, had his two young relatives rent the parking lot to keep the cars. After a Chon Buri car-rental service traced one of its rental vehicles’ GPS device to the parking lot, it filed a police complaint, resulting in the police search and impounding of the vehicles in question.

Alleged financing scam

Sia Meng’s two relatives, whose names appear on the parking-lot lease contract, were facing a charge of illegal car financing, and police were trying to determine if Sia Meng and a business partner were also involved in the illegal activities.

“Police initially found that these cars would be assigned other cars’ licences and be resold via social media at one-third of their actual value, if owners failed to redeem them,” the source said.

According to Metropolitan Police Area 2 deputy chief Pol Colonel Khomsak Sumangkaset, in his capacity as head of the car-seizure investigation, said police had identified 20 car-finance companies and 22 individuals as damaged persons.

The 10-strong police team is in the process of checking ownership of the cars so as to return them to the damaged persons, whom police will also summon for additional information soon. Khomsak affirmed that police would act according to the law and give importance to the car owners, while he denied speculation that the investigation team was under pressure. His comment was surprisingly calm, as the law allows finance companies to repossess vehicles if they lodge a complaint within 90 days of finding out about suspected theft or embezzlement. In this case, the deadline is February 28.

Meanwhile, Anuchart Deeprasert, chairman of the Thai Hire-Purchase Association and an executive at Thanachart Bank, said that under hire-purchase contracts, vehicle owners who are in debt to finance companies are not allowed to refinance with other providers.

As well, after the police have completed their legal actions, they have to return those vehicles to the hire-purchase companies that are the creditors. After that the companies will contact the borrowers who brought those vehicles for refinancing with a gambling-den owner over the loan payments due.

If the borrowers are able to pay the lenders all that is owed, they can keep the vehicles until the end of the loan contract. But if the borrowers are unable to pay the outstanding debt, the lenders will take action against them and repossess the vehicles.