Quite a few people have stayed out late, rebelling against the nation wide curfew that requires people to be at home from 11pm to 4am. More than 200 people were arrested during ‘no go’ hours from late Sunday to early Monday this week. But the nightly number of curfew arrests has dropped over the past month.

Earlier this month, Thai media reported 710 arrested in 1 night for breaking curfew. At that point, the curfew was 10pm to 4am. It was recently shortened an hour, starting at 11 pm. From late Sunday to early Monday, police stopped more than 22,000 people across Thailand for allegedly breaking the curfew but only 232 were arrested, Thai media reports. Many of them had valid reasons for being out late, such as driving home from work.

Many have been arrested since the curfew was put in place. Since prisons are overcrowded, some curfew violators are now sending people to temples to volunteer at soup kitchens. Some people have been clearly violating the curfew by throwing parties, or even speeding through curfew checkpoints.

But some people are out late because they have nowhere else to go. After a homeless man was arrested for violating curfew and ordered to stay home, the Human Right Watch raised the question “How can people stay home if they are homeless?”

The curfew will probably be in place for another month, but it will probably be shortened another hour, starting at midnight instead of 11pm.

SOURCES: Thai Residents | Thai Residents | Bangkok Post

Officers of the Crime Suppression Division say text messages on the popular Line application show that a woman accused of forcing her two year old “son” to swallow bleach isn’t the boy’s biological mother. This evidence, together with DNA test results expected next week, may lead to human trafficking charges being pressed against the woman as well.

A Line chat history between 29 year old Nittha Wongwan and the biological mother of a 4 year old girl adopted by Nittha (before she fell ill and died with similar symptoms to the boy’s) disproves her claim, according to police.

The boy was rescued and placed in a shelter for children in Pathum Thani, just north of Bangkok, after he was treated at Thammasat University Hospital, where doctors alerted police to the suspected child abuse. Authorities say Nittha, who was arrested last week, revealed in the chat that she is not the boy’s biological mother. Nittha has admitted to online fraud but denied a charge of attempted murder.

Nittha stands accused of deliberately making the boy ill to swindle donations from sympathetic viewers of her online videos. A check of her financial history found more than 20 million baht in several bank accounts, contradicting her claim of financial difficulties and an impoverished lifestyle. Investigators are tracking where the money came from and how it was spent.

‘Munchausen syndrome by proxy’ is a mental health problem in which a caregiver makes up or causes an illness or injury in a person under his or her care, such as a child, an elderly adult, or a person who has a disability. Because vulnerable people are the victims, MSBP is a form of child or elder abuse – Wikipedia.

Police are also checking whether she obtained life insurance policies for the children, which could be treated as a motive. They have already questioned the real mother of the 4 year old girl.

In 2018 Nittha was sentenced to 3 years in prison in a fraud case involving online product sales.

Police are now searching for evidence to prove how the chemical found by doctors actually got into the boy’s body, and a similar probe is being conducted into the case of the dead girl.

SOURCE: Bangkok Post

Illegal cigarettes, valued around 2.6 million baht, have been confiscated by police after they were smuggled in over the Burmese border and into the province of Prachuap Khiri Khan, Thai media reports. Three men were caught by police shortly after they crossed the border, but one was able to run back into Myanmar.

Although it was just cigarettes, smuggling of illegal substances has become a leading concern for Justice Minister Somsak Thepsutin. In the course of 6 months, thousands of people in northeast Thailand were arrested in drug cases, mostly smuggling marijuana across the Mekong and larger and more lucrative shipments of methamphetamine out of the Golden Triangle area.

Cigarette smuggling is a popular trade over the Burmese borders into central western Thailand down to Ranong province, and the southern province borders from Malaysia.

SOURCES: Thai Residents