A 19-year-old female who allegedly procured a 15-year-old girl to provide sexual services for a drug network in Roi Et has been nabbed in a police sting operation, fuelling concern that the age of suspects in human trafficking cases is getting younger.
In June this year, a 17-year old girl was arrested for providing a 14-year-old girl to have sex with an Indian tourist in Pattaya, while a teenage boy allegedly procured senior high-school students for six customers in Nakhon Sawan.
The operation in Roi Et took place during the early hours of Wednesday, around the same time another team of police and officers from other state agencies arrested a woman who had allegedly opened a karaoke bar in Chaiyaphum as a front for a brothel. Two of the seven female workers were found to be 16-year-old girls.
Pol Lt Col Detchat Munnami, deputy chief of investigation for Provincial Police Region 4, said the latest arrest in Roi Et resulted from a crackdown on drug gangs. He said the probe revealed that girls had been victimised by their own parents, some of whom had raped them and provided them for sex in exchange for methamphetamine pills.
"Officers arrested a girl [the 19-year-old] immediately after she received 2,000 baht from our two agents," Pol Lt Col Detcha said, referring to a sting operation at a motel in Muang district where agents met the suspect, who was accompanied by the underage girl.
He said the teen suspect admitted that a drug network had asked her to procure 15-year-old girls in return for money or speed pills. If she chose the money, she spent it on drugs and hanging around with friends, he added. She told police she had arranged sexual transactions on three occasions.
The 15-year-old victim, he continued, said she decided to work as a prostitute after her father was arrested on a drug charge and the money sent by her mother, who works in Pattaya, was not enough for her to live on.
Most of the customers were members of a drug network and her father's "friends", she told police. Some of them forced her to take speed pills before having sex.
Police charged the 19-year-old suspect with human trafficking and luring an underage girl into prostitution.
In Chaiyaphum's Muang district, karaoke owner Kanchana Thongluan was charged with human trafficking, opening a bar without permission and running a brothel.
Muang police chief Pol Col Phongphat Chaengmuenwai denied a report that one of his subordinates had taken bribes from the shop to turn a blind eye to the illegal business.
Police and state authorities raided an illegal karaoke bar - which allegedly also served as a brothel - in Chaiyaphum’s Muang district on Wednesday morning. (Photo: Makkawan Wannakul)