DSI to probe disappearance of Karen activist ‘Billy’ and encroachment in Trang national park

DSI chief Pol Colonel Paisit Wongmuang yesterday said the department’s special case committee had officially taken up the cases and assigned deputy chief Korrawat Panprapakorn to take charge of the disappearance of “Billy”. DSI investigators would re-examine all evidence, including images from CCTV cameras at the Kaeng Krachan National Park headquarters where Billy was detained, for possible leads for further investigation, he said. 
The re-examination of the case of the disappearance of “Billy” would include the bloodstain – a DNA test of which could only identify it was a man’s blood – previously found behind the driver’s seat of the park’s pickup truck used to carry the 30-year-old father of five to a park protection unit for questioning for allegedly possessing illegally harvested wild honey. 
Park officials under the command of Chaiwat Limlikhitaksorn claimed they released Billy after questioning.
But he has not been seen since shortly after his release. Billy had been set to testify as a witness for fellow Karen farmers of Ban Pong Luek-Bangkloy village who were seeking compensation after park officials evicted them and allegedly set fire to their forest homes in 2012.
Paisit said DSI investigators would ask the Central Institute of Forensic Science whether the bloodstain sample could be re-tested or whether any evidence could be sent for lab tests to other countries to help solve the case.
The Supreme Administrative Court last month ruled in the favour of compensation for six ethnic Karen plaintiffs – including the community’s 107-year-old spiritual leader Ko-I – but did not recognise their right to return to their forest home.
As for the case of encroachment into Hay Hat Chao Mai in Trang’s Kan Tang district, Paisit said a team of DSI investigators would be set up to continue building a case, including checking aerial photographs of the area taken in the past to compare with the present state, in search of evidence that the investors’ resorts were encroaching on park territory. 
The department’s deputy chief, Pol Lt-Colonel Prawuth Wongsinil, said the DSI Natural Resources and Environmental Cases section had been gathering the facts since last year. They had initially found some local influential group had intimidated officials in a dispute over the alleged land encroachment.
“In the past, there weren’t many people making use of land in the Hat Chao Mai area and they had the Sor Kor 1 (SK-1) claim certificates” in which people stake a claim to land but are unable to prove ownership, said Prawuth. “But later, the area of land occupied had expanded from what was stated in the SK-1 claim certificates, so we have to check the area’s aerial photographs in retrospect. The DSI map centre can examine information going back to 1967,” Prawuth said.