Police seize 1.1 million speed pills on two tour buses

Two travel bags containing 376,000 speed pills were seized from this interprovincial passenger bus in Lampang after another three bags with 740,000 pills seized from another tour bus in neighbouring Lamphun province on Friday night. (Photo by Aswin Wongnorkaew)

More than 1.1 million speed pills have been seized from two Bangkok-bound passenger buses in two separate searches in Lampang and Lamphun.

Three bus employees have been detained, but one claimed he acted alone to smuggle the drugs in the two buses belonging to the same company, according to police.

In one operation, police stopped a Sombat Tour Co bus operating on the Chiang Mai-Bangkok route at a checkpoint on the Super Highway in Hang Chat district of Lampang at around 9.30pm on Friday. The search found 376,000 methamphetamine pills in two travel bags in the luggage compartment.

Officials detained driver Somchet Inkhong, 43, of Nakhon Sawan, and assistant Natthapol Kaewkhong, 25, of Chai Nat, for questioning. Three employees from the two tour buses, on which 1.1 million speed pills were found in five bags, were detained for questioning, but one confessed that he acted alone. The search followed the discovery of 740,000 speed pills on another inter-provincial passenger bus at a police checkpoint in Mae Tha district of Lamphun just two hours earlier.

A combined team of police and soldiers found the drugs in three travel bags in the luggage compartment of the bus, also owned by Sombat Tour Co. Police said that Putthipong Kusolpayungkit, a bus worker who lives in Mae La district in Mae Hong Son, confessed that he took five travel bags onto the two buses for delivery to an agent in Bangkok. He claimed he acted alone without the knowledge of the drivers and the other staff of the two buses.

Police took Mr Putthipong and the other bus workers in for questioning.

The seizures came after Maj Sophon Pakkasem, deputy commander of a military unit in Chiang Mai, received information from an informant that a drug gang would smuggle a large amount of speed pills from the North to Bangkok by tour bus.