Fisherman arrested with yaba at Mekong River pier
A local fisherman was arrested and 3,951 yaba pills seized at the Ban Na Kha Tha Pier in Nakhon Phanom’s Ban Phaeng district on Sunday morning, said Commander Krit Kongsri, head of the Ban Phaeng-based naval patrol unit on the Mekong River.
The patrol unit and related agencies staked out the area after receiving an informant’s tip-off that a batch of narcotics would be smuggled from Laos into Thailand via the border area overlapping Ban Phaeng and Tha Uthen districts.
They spotted a long-tailed boat usually used for fishing heading from Laos to the Thai shore at 7.30am. As a man disembarked, officers approached the boat to search it. The man turned around to flee, but officers promptly nabbed him.
The boat search yielded the yaba pills, which the man, Boonyiam Thumsi, 33, later admitted to having picked up from a Lao fisherman at a mid-river meeting point. He told officials he was instructed to deliver the goods to a designated location in exchange for Bt20,000 payment.
Boonyiam said this was the first time he had made such a trip and that he made a living from fishing.
He was handed over to police who initially charged him with having narcotics in his possession.