THURSDAY, March 28, 2024
nationthailand

Inside job suspected as probe opens into 11 guns missing from Thong Lor police station

Inside job suspected as probe opens into  11 guns missing from Thong Lor police station

National police chief Pol General Chakthip Chaijinda has instructed officers to speedily investigate the case of 11 guns that went missing from Bangkok’s Thong Lor police station in what is suspected to have been an inside job, Metropolitan Police Division 5 chief Pol Maj-General Mongkol Warunno said on Monday.

Nine revolvers and two SIG Sauer semi-automatic pistols went missing from where they had been stored in the station’s third-floor finance room, Mongkol said. 
The guns were there when an inventory check was conducted last October, but were nowhere to be seen by the time another check was carried out last month, on the occasion of a new superintendent’s assignment, he explained. 
A precinct-level fact-finding committee has therefore been set up to probe what happened to the missing firearms and who took them away, the division chief said, adding that the investigation should be completed within seven days. 
In parallel, the Metropolitan Police Division 5 has sent an investigation team to interview potential witnesses and check CCTV footage in relation to the missing guns, he said, suggesting that it had likely been an inside job as the firearms were kept in an area that is normally beyond the access of outsiders. 
If this proved to be the case, the culprit(s) would face disciplinary and criminal-code punishments, as it would be a matter of malfeasance of duty and corruption concerning state property, Mongkol said.

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