Dead Bhutanese believed to have been part of a gang

The 46-year-old, identified as Ugyen Tshering, could have been a member of a drug-trafficking gang, acting Metropolitan Police Bureau chief Pol Lt-General Sanit Mahathaworn said. 

He travelled with six other alleged members of the gang on March 28 and they checked into a hotel on Mahachai Road in Bangkok’s Phra Nakhon district. His fellow travellers have been identified as Tandin Wangchuk, 35; Sonam Zam, 22; Dechen Dema, 30; Pema Khudu, 51; Kinzang, 32; and Manoj Kumar Daga, 37. Five of them are Bhutanese citizens, including two women, while the head of the gang is believed to be Daga, an Indian national, Sanit said. Police have already sought arrest warrants for Tandin and Manoj.

It is suspected that Tshering died of a drug overdose resulting from the method of packing his body with drugs – which is reportedly common among gangs moving illicit drugs from central Asia.

The Institute of Forensic Medicine said he had ingested 58 balls of crystal methamphetamine, better known as “ice”, and one of the bags had burst inside him. The gang was allegedly planning to sell the drug inside Thailand rather than using the country as a transit point, he said. 

A video clip from CCTV at their hotel showed two Bhutanese men carrying one big and two small bags out of the building at 1am on April 1. Another outside camera showed them dumping the big bag into the canal before getting into a cab. 

Police said the gang may not have had the skills to take the drugs out of the dead body, so decided to dump it in the canal. Sanit added that there might be several other people involved in the case. 

A police source said all six suspects had already left Thailand. Earlier Sanit said authorities were preparing to have the suspects extradited back to Thailand if they had returned to their countries of origin or were hiding in Central Asia, he said. 

He added that the shop owner who sold the suspects bags had cooperated with police and the information he provided was useful in creating sketches of the suspects. 

It is rare to find Bhutan nationals involved in drug trafficking in Thailand. Reports from the Office of the Narcotics Control Board (ONCB) show that such networks often smuggle cocaine from the South American countries of Bolivia, Peru and Columbia via Brazil to Singapore, Turkey, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Ethiopia, before bringing the haul into Thailand. 

Ice, meanwhile, is transported from Mali, Nigeria, Benin, Togo and Ghana through Ethiopia to Thailand, according to the ONCB.

Networks reportedly use three main routes to smuggle heroin to China – from Thailand to India or Nepal, where the drugs are picked up and then flown into Guangzhou, Shanghai, Beijing or Hong Kong; from Thailand to India, Nepal or the UAE where heroin is picked up before being flown into Thailand, which is used as a “rest stop” before transit to China; and by bus from Bangkok to Songkhla, crossing to Malaysia, where the drugs are picked up by African smugglers and then flown into China.