BANGKOK: Police seized 24 kilogrammes of crystal methamphetamine worth 70 million baht and arrested three men in two separate raids in Bangkok and Nakhon Phanom, police said on Friday.
In Bangkok, Arlae Sae Woo, 30, a Chiang Rai native, was apprehended in Lat Phrao district with 21kg of crystal methamphetamine, Pol Maj Gen Ronnasil Poosara, deputy chief of Provincial Police Region 1 said during a news conference today.
Police posing as customers had contacted Mr Arlae to buy illicit drugs following information that a drug-trafficking gang from the North would smuggle narcotics to him to distribute in the capital and surrounding provinces.
When Mr Arlae arrived on a motorcycle at the entrance of Soi Nak Niwas 49 on Thursday afternoon allegedly to deliver the drugs, police arrested him. His bag containing two kilos of ya ice was seized.
The officers then took the suspect to search his room at the Tamnak Thong apartments at nearby Soi Nak Niwas 47 where they found 19 packs of crystal meth, each weighing a kilogramme. The seizure was worth about 63 million baht, police said.
The suspect’s motorcycle, a mobile phone and four bank books were seized.
Police said Mr Arlae confessed he worked as a labourer in Bangkok before his friends introduced him to a Lisor tribal drug trafficker known only as Mr Meng. He claimed he had been paid 10,000 baht a month by the drug gang.
Authorities would also stem the influx of cough syrup and other narcotic substances into the deep South, he added.