Three Chinese nationals, wanted in Thailand for alleged involvement in the kidnap and murder of a Chinese student in Nonthaburi province last week, have been arrested by Chinese police in Hebei province in the northern part of Beijing.
Pol Gen Damrongsak Kittipraphat, Thailand’s national police chief, told a press conference this morning (Tuesday) that a team of Thai immigration police had already flown to Beijing to join the Chinese police in the interrogation of the three suspects.
Thai police had sought an Interpol Red Notice for the arrest of the three suspects.
The police chief said, however, that the three suspects might have to be tried in a Chinese court, if the Chinese authorities do not want to extradite them to Thailand to stand trial. In this case, the Thai police will gather all the relevant evidence to be sent to their Chinese counterparts.
He added that the sentence for murder in China can be death.
He also said that the Thai police are holding a 19-year-old Thai bar girl for interrogation, as she is suspected of being an accessory to the kidnap, adding police are looking into whether more people were involved in the crime.
The Chinese student, a 22-year-old third-year music student at Bangkok Thonburi University, went missing and was allegedly kidnapped on March 28th, in front of the Central Westgate shopping mall in Bang Yai district, Nonthaburi province. Her body was found in a ditch in a banana plantation in Bang Yai on April 1st.
Meanwhile, the “Lui Chine” webpage said in a post that the case is a typical romance scam, in which a gang gains information about the wealth of their potential victim’s family and then approaches the victim via the social media to try to befriend her. Then, when the victim flew to Thailand to further her studies, they followed her with a plan to kidnap her.
The webpage noted that several Chinese netizens asked why the victim’s father did not pay the ransom or alert Chinese police, after he was contacted by her kidnappers demanding 500,000 yuan (~2.5 million baht) in ransom.
The father did tell the victim’s Thai lecturer about the kidnap, but suspected that it might be a prank.
