A 59-year-old man accused of repeatedly raping his step-granddaughter for nearly 10 years has been arrested in Chachoengsao.
Police arrested Nukarn Phuangkaew, alias Ed Sai Mai, on Tuesday in the car park of Thongchai Industrial Co in Ban Pho district of the eastern province, said Pol Maj Gen Theeradet Thumsuthee, chief investigator of the Metropolitan Police Bureau in Bangkok.
Mr Nukarn, of Sai Mai district in Bangkok, was wanted on an arrest warrant issued on May 2 for raping and committing indecent acts against a person aged under 15.
A criminal record check showed the suspect had served two years in prison for a drug offence from 2014-16.
He became the suspect in the rape case after a 16-year-old girl disclosed her bitter experience via the Sai Mai Tong Rod (Survive) Facebook page. She said she had been raped repeatedly by her step-grandfather since she was seven years old.
The man often used force to rape her while her grandmother was not in the house in Ongkharak district of Nakhon Nayok, she said. He never wore a condom, said the girl, adding that he had been infected with HIV.
When she was younger, the girl said, she did not even know what her step-grandfather had done was called. She just knew that she felt pain and that it was very scary. She dared not resist because he threatened to detain her in a duck pen and take her to sell to a brothel, according to the victim.
The victim, now 16, filed a complaint with police at the Bang Khen station in Bangkok on April 28. The MPB investigators subsequently obtained information that the suspect had been spotted driving a hired vehicle on the Burapha Withi elevated expressway.
On Tuesday morning, the officers saw the suspect at the tollgate while he was lowering the window of a tour bus he drove to pay a toll. They chased the bus to a factory in Chachoengsao, where he had taken some employees. Officers then arrested him, said Pol Maj Gen Theeradet.
During questioning, Mr Nukarn reportedly admitted to having had sex with his step-grandchild, but he denied raping her. He claimed the girl had approached him. He also denied that he had been infected with HIV.
He claimed he had sex with the girl six times. When the scandal was exposed, he fled to Samut Prakan and worked as a tour bus driver.
The arresting team handed him over to the Bang Khen police station for legal action.