Six suspects, including two women, have been taken into custody by the police for their suspected roles in the kidnapping of a Chinese businessman and the demand for a four million baht ransom.
A Chinese national complained to Lumpini officers that he had lost contact with his acquaintance, according to Pol Maj-Gen Noppasilp Poonsawat, deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Bureau. On April 15th, he received a video call from an anonymous man in which his companion who had vanished was depicted with facial bruising. For his release, the man requested a ransom of roughly 4,000,000 baht.
The man asserted that he had transferred three transactions totaling 3,930,000 baht into the bank account of one of the suspects, a woman only known as “Sarita,” and that the kidnappers intended to free the hostage at a Hua Hin restaurant on April 16th.
When “Kob” and “June” arrived with the hostage, undercover police officers who had been waiting outside the eatery nabbed the two suspects. In the Sathorn district of Bangkok, two other suspects named “Kai” and “Nampetch” were detained on Monday night. The sixth suspect, “Thanayuth,” alias “Jo,” was apprehended last night (Monday) at Khlong 6 in the province of Pathum Thani. “Sarita” was detained in a parking lot in Hua Hin.
The Chinese businessman, whose name was withheld, was allegedly kidnapped from his hotel room in the Lang Suan neighborhood on the evening of April 14.
On the hotel’s 17th floor, a CCTV camera captures two men dragging a cart while pulling a sizable plastic package covered in cloth out of a room and into an elevator. The hostage’s light blue Mercedes Benz was driving away toward a Hua Hin resort as the two guys exited the lift in the hotel’s parking lot.
The former Suphan Buri province beauty queen “Nampetch” and her Thai boyfriend, according to Pol Maj-Gen Noppasilp, are accused of plotting the hostage’s kidnapping and ransom attempt.
Sarita’s bank account had 2.3 million baht seized by police.
The hostage had escaped to Thailand on a holiday visa while sought in China for fraud, the deputy commissioner added. But he said that no Interpol Red Notice has been issued for his arrest as of yet.
