POLICE have busted two major drug gangs and jointly netted 600,000 “yaba” pills and two |kilograms of crystal meth, or “ice”.
Sing Buri resident Anurak Naksanit, 39, and his 42-year-old partner Urai Kaewthawee were arrested and 400,000 yaba pills seized at a checkpoint in Nakhon Sawan’s Banphot Pisai district at 4am yesterday, Highway Police chief Maj-General Somchai Kaosamran told a press conference.
Somchai said Anurak confessed that he had been asked by a drug-addict friend to transport drugs from Sing Buri to customers in the Samrong area of Samut Prakan and was about to deliver another batch to Uttaradit province using the friend’s car.
The suspect claimed he had agreed to transport the drugs for Bt50,000, half of which had already been transferred into his bank account.
Anurak, whom police said had been arrested twice before for drug use, said Urai had been unaware he was carrying drugs. He was charged with possessing illicit drugs with the intent to sell.
In the second case, a former member of the Tambon Pongsa Administration Organisation in Mae Hong Song’s Pai district was arrested – and 200,000 yaba pills and 2kg of crystal meth seized – in a police sting operation in Chiang Mai’s Muang district on Saturday.
Acting Provincial Police Region 5 chief Pol Maj-General Pulsap Prasertsak told a separate press conference yesterday that suspect Suchat Phahor, 39, would face charges of possessing illicit drugs with intent to sell and drug trafficking.
Pulsap said police had been trailing Suchat, a suspected member of a drug-dealing network, for a month before launching the sting operation to buy the drugs from him for Bt6.4 million.
As the drug delivery was carried out near a hospital on Saturday, police arrested Suchat. He allegedly then confessed to acquiring drugs from hilltribe people in Mae Hong Son and transferring the contraband into Chiang Mai on more than one occasion.
Police are now investigating possible accomplices in the trafficking network, including retail dealers.