Police are trying to confirm whether a man in Aranyaprathet was forced by a group of men to confess to killing his wife, although it was found later that she had died after being assaulted by a group of teenage boys, two of them sons of policemen.
Deputy national police chief Pol Gen Surachate Hakparn said on Wednesday that he had been made aware of a video and witnesses’ accounts indicating that a group of men covered the head of Panya Khongsaenkham with a black bag, chained and assaulted him and forced him to confess to the murder of his 47-year-old wife, Buaphan Tansu, in the border town in Sa Kaeo province early last Friday.
Pol Gen Surachate said his team would verify the report. Closed-circuit TV video showed that Mr Panya, 54, disappeared for two hours after his arrest, although the location of the arrest was not far from the Aranyaprathet police station where he was first officially questioned and charged, Pol Gen Surachate said.
If Mr Panya was forced to make the confession, he would be re-interrogated. If he was forced to confess by policemen, they would face both criminal and disciplinary action, the deputy national chief said.
Pol Gen Surachate travelled to Aranyaprathet to meet Mr Panya and look into the police handling of the investigation into Buaphan’s death.
He said he had informed national police chief Pol Gen Torsak Sukvimol of the new development in the case. He also promised there would not be any favour for any policemen’s children.
After Buaphan was found dead, Mr Panya confessed to assault causing the death of his wife, who was reportedly mentally unstable. However, security video subsequently showed the woman being harassed by a group of five teenage boys aged 13-16 years near a convenience store in the early hours of last Friday.
She threw a bottle at them. The group then assaulted her and took her on one of their motorcycles. Her body was found later on Friday in a pond. Two of the young assailants were reportedly local policemen’s sons.
The five boys already confessed to the crime and Mr Panya appeared to have been made a scapegoat earlier, said prominent activist Kanthat Pongpaiboonvej, alias the “good Samaritan” Kan Chompalang.