Police slay suspect, seize a million pills

Drugs police on Friday killed one suspected drug trafficker and seized more than one million methamphetamines pills worth more than 300 million baht.

The operation started on Thursday, when police raided a two-storey house in the Klong Toey area and seized 200,000 methamphetamine tablets, or ya ba.

Two men were arrested and a drug-making machine found.

Yesterday, Nanphong Rattanakornkaewchinda, 30, from Phetchabun, was arrested by Narcotics Suppression Bureau (NSB) police in his ceramics shop-house in Bang Phli district of Samut Prakan. Police found 1.01 million methamphetamine tablets hidden in the shop.

Mr Nanphong said he was hired by a man to carry the drugs from Chiang Mai's Omkoi district. The drugs were to be stored at his house for distribution to customers. Before the raid, he had delivered 100,000 tablets of ya ba to one customer at a department store on Rama II in the morning. He was paid 300,000 baht for the drugs.

The NSB police said the ya ba had been smuggled into Bangkok from Chiang Mai. The Chiang Mai supplier was also the source of the drugs seized in the Klong Toey townhouse on Thursday, police said.

Before the Bang Phli raid in the afternoon, a drug trafficker identified as Manop Chaengkhlai, 39, a resident of Suphan Buri, was shot dead on Rama II Road after exchanging fire with police.

Police had been chasing the man and say that at first it appeared as if he was willing to surrender.

Suddenly he pointed a gun at the police, and police fired in self-defence, said NSB commander Adithep Panjamanon.

The officers had followed him from a Big C branch in Samut Prakan's Bang Phli district, where he delivered drugs, to the expressway's exit which is connected to Rama II Road.

Even after being shot four times, the man still tried to escape. He managed to get into a car but died there before he could leave, said Pol Lt Gen Adithep.

A total of 50,000 methamphetamine pills were found in Manop's pickup truck, he said.

Police have not confirmed if Manop was a customer of Mr Nanphong.

Following the Thursday bust in Klong Toey, police learned that Manop was a drug dealer who obtained his drugs from the same Klong Toey supplier.

At Suvarnabhumi airport yesterday, police arrested Shabbir Ahmad, 27, a Pakistani, with about 830g of heroin worth 2.5 million baht.