Nakhon Si Thammarat police up security ahead of crime boss’s arrival

Security in the southern province of Nakhon Si Thammarat was tightened ahead of the arrival of crime boss “Paeng Na Node”, who is being extradited from Indonesia on Tuesday evening.

Police have also set up checkpoints on four major routes leading to the provincial seat since the morning.

A team of fully-armed officers have been stationed at the Benjama intersection, which the extradited fugitive Chavalit Thongduang, 37, will be driven past on his way from the airport to the Muang Nakhon Si Thammarat Police Station.

Pol Maj-General Somchai Suetortrakul, the Nakhon Si Thammarat police chief, has also dispatched a team of armed commandoes to maintain security at the provincial airport.

The Muang police station has also stepped up security by putting up barriers on the gates of the station’s compound. The security efforts were checked by the station’s commander Pol Colonel Kittichai Krainara on Tuesday morning.

Chavalit, nicknamed Paeng Na Node after his hometown Na Node in Phatthalung province, managed to escape in the early hours of October 22, 2023, after faking an illness and being admitted to Nakhon Si Thammarat Hospital.

Meanwhile, the Justice Ministry chose not to dispatch a C-130 military plane to bring Chavalit back from Jakarta. Instead, his extradition will be carried out as an Interpol mission, for which a flight will be chartered from Garuda Indonesia Airlines. The flight is scheduled to land at Nakhon Si Thammarat Airport between 5 and 6pm on Tuesday.

Separately, Pol Colonel Kittichai said on Tuesday that Chavalit will be detained at the police station pending an investigation into his escape, adding that police will seek court approval for his detention.

He added that Phatthalung police will also seek to get their hands on Chavalit so he can face three arrest warrants in that province.

Once the court approves Chavalit’s detention, the Corrections Department will decide on where he will be placed, Kittichai said.

When he escaped, Chavalit was serving a 20-year-three-month term for trying to free a drug suspect from police custody. Separately, the Phatthalung Court sentenced him in absentia in December last year to life imprisonment for his role in the attempted murder of a court official in 2019.