The National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) has filed a complaint asking that charges be laid against a senior police officer for helping former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra flee the country.
Col Burin Thongprapai, a legal officer of the Supreme Command and NCPO, submitted the complaint to Pol Maj Gen Pakapong Petra, a deputy chief of the Metropolitan Police Bureau (MPB), and Pol Lt Col Charoensit Kongitthi, deputy chief of Pathumwan police station and the main investigator in the case.
They were asked to charge Pol Col Chairit Anurit with dereliction of duty as he drove the former prime minister to the border, enabling her to sneak out of the country, in a Toyota Camry sedan with fake licence plates.
Col Burin filed the complaint on behalf of the junta.
Pol Col Chairit was transferred from the position of deputy chief of the MPB's Division 5 to an inactive post at police headquarters on Sept 22.
Investigators have found out the car's engine was smuggled into the country.
Two Nakhon Pathom police officers also accused of assisting in Yingluck's escape have already acknowledged the charge of bringing the engine into the country illegally.
Deputy national police chief Pol Gen Srivara Ransibrahmanakul said in September that Pol Col Chairit would be charged if DNA comparisons of samples taken from the vehicle and from Yingluck's house were found to match. It was later announced the tests were inconclusive because of the poor quality of the samples from the car.
The MPB set up a panel to investigate Pol Col Chairit's actions, and it faulted him for a serious breach of police discipline.
However, Pol Gen Srivara said in October the Royal Thai Police Office had still not received the investigation report from city police.
Yingluck is believed to have slipped out of the country on Aug 23, two days before the Supreme Court's Criminal Division for Holders of Political Positions was scheduled to deliver its ruling on her government's corruption plagued rice-pledging scheme.
When she did not appear delivery of the judgement was deferred to Sept 27, when she was convicted and sentenced in absentia to five years in prison for failing to stop fake government-to-government sales of stockpiled rice despite several warnings about corruption in the pledging scheme.
Yingluck is believed to have been escorted by the three police officers to the Cambodian border in Aranyaprathet district of Sa Kaeo province. She has not appeared in public since leaving and her whereabouts remain uncertain.