BANGKOK – Thai police have made another arrest in the heroin smuggling case involving a female flight attendant who was detained in Australia with drugs hidden in a cloth bag.
On July 5, officers arrested Nantawat, 47, a resident of Phayao province, at an apartment in Kamang subdistrict, Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya district. He was charged with joint possession of a category 1 narcotic, heroin, for sale without permission, with the intent to trade.
Key takeaways
- Police arrested a 47-year-old man in Ayutthaya after expanding the case linked to a flight attendant caught with heroin in Australia.
- Investigators tied the new arrest to heroin hidden inside Thai elephant-pattern cloth bags.
- The suspect admitted he destroyed the bags and dumped the drugs after hearing about the arrest in Melbourne.
- Forensic officers later found heroin residue on the discarded fabric scraps.
Police also seized seven pieces of a Thai elephant-pattern cloth bag and two clear plastic bags containing white powder recovered from the bag lining. Preliminary testing confirmed the substance was heroin, with a recorded weight of 0.4 grams.
The case began on June 30, when the Australian Federal Police contacted Thai police after the Australian Border Force arrested Ms. Mina, a flight attendant for a local airline, upon arrival at Melbourne Airport. Officers found 900 grams of heroin concealed inside the lining of a Thai elephant-pattern cloth bag.
As investigators followed the trail, they found a link to Nantawat and searched his room at the apartment in Ayutthaya.
During questioning, Nantawat admitted that he had received a black bag from a man named Uthai. Inside were six Thai elephant-pattern cloth bags that hid narcotics. He said that after learning the flight attendant had been arrested in Australia, he became afraid and called Uthai. According to Nantawat, Uthai told him to handle it however he wanted.
He then used a knife to cut up the bags, poured the heroin into the toilet in his room, and tried to destroy the evidence. After that, he placed the torn fabric and handles into black bags and drove around Ayutthaya to throw them away at different locations.
Police later brought him to point out where he had dumped the evidence. At a spot along Highway 4040 in Champa subdistrict, Tha Ruea district, officers found a black bag containing remaining pieces of the Thai elephant-pattern cloth bag. Forensic police extracted white powder from the fabric and confirmed that it was heroin.
Nantawat has been taken into custody and sent to investigators at the Narcotics Suppression Bureau for legal action. Police say the investigation is still open, and they are moving to identify and arrest the remaining people involved.
