Hunting party police officer might not walk free after all
- Published: 29 Jan 2013 at 11.37
- Online news: Opinion
The illegal hunting controversy involving a middle-ranking police officer reminds me of the Thung Yai hunting scandal four decades ago. It involved both police and army officers, who misused an army helicopter for their particular hunting spree.
The Thung Yai scandal would not have been publicly exposed and so probably would not have fuelled the resentment the public already felt toward the then military dictatorship of Field Marshal Thanom Kittikachorn and Field Marshal Prapass Charusathiara and Colonel Narong Kittikachorn had the chopper used in the illegal hunting not crashed in Bang Len district of Nakhon Pathom on April 29, 1973.
The law of karma had caught up with the illegal hunters, so it was said. Six passengers onboard the ill-fated army helicopter, including a boy, were killed and four others were seriously injured. But what caught public attention and fuelled an uproar, especially among student activists, the pioneers of the environmentalist movement years afterward, were the large number of animal carcasses found scattered over the crash scene.
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