Heavily armed police from the Crime Suppression Division (CSD) today escorted former deputy commerce minister Pol Lt Col Bunyin Tangphakorn to Phra Khanong Court for permission to detain him 12 days for questioning for murder conspiracy
As the CSD police sought his first detention, the court was also asked not to grant him bail.
While at the court, the former minister and former Nakhon Sawan MP questioned why his arrest came just after the Chuwong family held a religious ceremony to mark the first anniversary of the death of the construction tycoon Chuwong Sae Tang.
He suspected this was meant to discredit him as investigation was delayed for over a year and evidence to link him to the murder conspiracy was just disclosed and charges filed against him.
He even challenged Chuwong’s wife to swear in front of the Temple of the Emerald Buddha that her husband did not cheat her.
The former minister was arrested at a resort hotel at Khao Yai national park yesterday.
Also was with him at the resort was a former stock broker Ms Uracha Wachirakulton, a suspect in a related case.
Ms Uracha, who is free on bail, was not charged.
Earlier last year she claimed she didn’t know the minister personally, but just a business contact because he was also one of her clients.
She is the person who claimed to have obtained 300 million baht of stocks transferred to him by the construction tycoon out of personal favour a few months before his mysterious death in a car accident. The former minister was the driver of the van that the tycoon travelled along with on the night of the car crash.
The former minister claimed it was an accident that killed the tycoon, but the impact from the collision with the tree raised suspicion that it could hardly cause death.
The Central Institute of Forensic Science was asked by the tycoon’s sister and wife to re-examine the result of the autopsy carried out earlier by the police.
It came out that the tycoon died from broken bones on the neck from hardened object.
The CSD police later simulated the van crash at the site of the crash with same type of van and at speed given by the former minister during the driving.
He claimed to have drive at over 80 kilometres, and swerved to avoid hitting another vehicle coming on its way, and crashing on a tree over 100 metres off the main road.
But the simulation showed it was hardly possible to make a swerve into the Soi at such speed and run for a hundred metres to ram at the tree and kill the tycoon sitting on the side with safety belt fastened.
Besides the CSD also found that the van just ran at 30 kilometres am hour, not at 80 kilometres as claimed.
The police believed there might be more suspects in the murder conspiracy.
