Woman found buried in rubber plantation

THALANG: The body of a young Burmese woman was found in a rubber plantation near Baan Manik Mountain in Tambon Srisoonthorn yesterday afternoon. A villager searching for wild vegetables alerted police after finding a mound that looked like a grave, with pieces of torn cloth and burned paper mixed in with the dirt. Pol Col Prapakorn Saksupa, Superintendent of Thalang Police Station, said that about one meter under the mound, officers found the body of a woman aged about 19 or 20. Her body was wrapped in a pa-toong – a Thai-style skirt – and her face was covered with a banana leaf. In the pit with her were her clothes, a bottle of rice wine, some Mistine cosmetics and a Mistine catalog. Some of the items were partially burnt. A Burmese couple who identified themselves as the woman’s parents arrived on the scene shortly afterwards. They told the police that the young woman had died three days previously of malaria. After her death they had buried her. They did not take her to the hospital and told only a few close friends about the burial because, they said, they were afraid of the police. “They said that they covered her face with the banana leaf because it was a Burmese tradition. The same went for the rice wine,” Col Prapakorn said. “The autopsy confirmed that she died about three to five days ago. We also know that she was not raped,” he added. But the pathologist discovered some injuries to her skull, he said, consistent with her head having been hit with a jorb – in English, a mattock, a kind of digging tool. Following the autopsy, the body was re-buried at a cemetery in Kamala. The police are investigating whether or not the parents’ story is true.