A disarming mystery

BANGKOK: As the international media has been puzzling recently over the mystery of why five dismembered human feet have washed up on the beaches of British Columbia over the past year – the most recent find being on June 16 – Thailand now has its own body-part puzzle to ponder: a severed arm found on the tracks at Hualamphong Railway Station in the heart of Bangkok on June 12.

After spotting the rather rotten arm lying on the track at 2:10 pm, a passenger notified station officers.

A closer inspection by police, a doctor and rescue volunteers determined that the missing limb was a right arm severed at the elbow, most probably from a woman.

From the decayed state and foetid stench of the limb, police believe it was severed from its owner about five days before its discovery.

The arm, blackened and covered in oil, had no tattoos, jewelery or other markings that might aid identification.

Maj Sirirat Kongthanajirakul, an inspector with the Railway Police, said the original owner was most likely a women owing to the size of the arm and the shape of the fingers.

As for how it found its way to the station, Maj Sirirat said that she didn’t believe the limb’s owner was murdered.

No attempt had been made to conceal the arm or hide its identity, so it was unlikely that someone had chopped it off and thrown it on the track in order to dispose of it, she explained.

A more likely explanation, Maj Sirirat explained, is that the owner was hit by the train. The force likely severed the limb, which got stuck to the train’s undercarriage – where it remained until it stopped in Hualamphong, where it finally fell onto the tracks.

Despite this hypothesis, police have not ruled out the possibility that the body part’s owner was an assault victim. Police have contacted all of Thailand’s train stations to check for any reports of recent accidents on the tracks.

When he was asked for a comment on the grisly find, Maj Gen Chokchai Deeprasert, commander of the Railway Police, said that he wouldn’t like to speculate because the incident had not been reported to him and he didn’t know all the details.