LAMPANG: Three men were arrested and nearly 1.4 million speed pills worth 280 million baht were seized from a drainage pipe where they had been hidden in Thoen district on Saturday.
The discovery followed intensive police interrogation of the three suspects: Wutthipong Seeya, 28, and Santi Kornrattanasak, 34, both of Pai district in Mae Hong Son; and Chainarong Sae Lee, 20, of Ngao district in Lampang.
A total of 695 bundles containing 1.39 million speed pills were seized from the roadside drainage pipe along the intended smuggling route. The drugs had a face value of 278 million baht, said police.
The arrests followed a tip-off that a drug-smuggling gang was preparing to move a large shipment bound for Bangkok through Thoen district.
Police and soldiers were then deployed to patrol possible smuggling routes. After spotting two suspicious pickup trucks and one motorcycle on the Thoen-Thung Saliam route on Saturday, officers stopped the vehicles for a search at the Wiang Mok police checkpoint.
The search found nothing illegal in the vehicles, but when the three occupants were questioned further, they confessed to having hidden the drugs after a vehicle leading them signalled that there were police checkpoints ahead.
The suspects told police they put black plastic bags containing the drugs inside the empty drainage pipe and asked a colleague to guard them. Officers then took them to the location, where they found the drugs but the guard had vanished.
Police say the suspects told them they had been hired to smuggle the drugs from Chiang Khong district in Chiang Rai to deliver to an agent in Bangkok.
The four men including the missing guard had been offered 300,000 baht each for the job, or 1.2 million in total. They had been paid 80,000 baht in advance and the remaining sum was to have been paid after the drugs were successfully delivered.
Officers question one of three suspected drug couriers following the Lampang drug discovery. (Photo by Aswin Wongnorkaew)
