The two had confessed to the crime, Provincial Police Region 4 acting chief Pol Maj-General Jatupol Panraksa told the press yesterday.
The body of the second grader who attended Ban Nong Moung-Lup Kha School was found covered in twigs and leaves on Monday morning under a tree behind Wat Sawang Khongkaram.
Authorities estimated that the boy had been killed 24 hours before he was found and reported that his corpse showed injuries consonant with sodomy.
Khon Kaen police deputy chief Pol Colonel Jaraspat Suttayasoranakom said Niran Chanayut, 36, who had already been disrobed, had previously been wanted for a 2007 Bangkok robbery case but he apparently had been ordained as a monk and been living at the monastery since the beginning of Buddhist Lent this year.
The man allegedly had sexual relations with teenagers in the village and reportedly had asked the 15-year-old to lure the six-year-old.
According to police investigators, the boy had been playing with friends in the temple compound on Sunday before being called by a monk into his living quarters. He was not seen alive again.
Police took DNA samples from both suspects and said the teenager had confessed to suffocating the boy until he passed out before he and Niran took turns raping him.
The temple’s abbot Phra Athikarn Sommai Khantiko said he and people in the village knew about Niran’s criminal record, but people tolerated him because he was a native resident who people hoped would be redeemed by the monkhood.
“When he first came to the temple, I told him not to bring teenagers over, but he refused to comply. He also did not take part in any temple activities, until everybody was fed up with him. We did not do anything because we knew he had done bad things in the past,” he said.