SUPHAN BURI – Narcotics suppression police have seized 800,000 methamphetamine pills in a wild car chase late afternoon on Thursday, with an officer injured.
The operation was based on the intelligence on drug dealers in the central region gathered over the past six months by the Narcotics Suppression Bureau (NSB). The information convinced police that a Honda city heading to Suphan Buri was involved in drug trade, according to Thai media reports.
Around 6pm on Thursday, the police blocked a junction in tambon Plubpla chai of U Thong district. The suspect car rammed through the barriers and the officers shot its tyres. The car driver fired at the police, hitting Pol Sgu Maj Suriya Thongbangphra in the leg. He was sent to a local hospital and later transferred to the Police General Hospital.
More than 10 officers followed the vehicle whose driver seemed to know the route well. He finally stopped his car in an isolated sugarcane plantation. When the police vehicle spotted it, he backed the car to hit the police's car. He then abandoned the vehicle and fled into a sugarcane plantation amid heavy rain.
With the help from local police and the military, 50 officers tried in vain to track him down.
Pol Lt Gen Rewat Klinkesorn, the NSB commissioner, said the abandoned vehicle was searched at Plubpla Chai Tambon Administrative Organisation and eight bags of methamphetamine totalling 800,000 pills were found on the back seat.
Pol Lt Gen Rewat said the bureau had tailed this gang for a long time and believed it had transported the pills from the North to Suphan Buri and nearby provinces.
Six months ago, police seized more than 600,000 pills in Don Chedi district. They have since tried to expand the investigation to arrest the gang leader.