BANGKOK, April 30 (Xinhua) -- Over a million tablets of methamphetamine were seized in a sedan in southern Thailand and a house in a suburban area of Bangkok on Sunday, a police general said on Monday.
Police seized 390,000 tablets of methamphetamine which had been hidden in the trunk of the sedan at a parking lot of a retail store in Hat Yai, 944 km south of Bangkok, and arrested four persons, two males and two females, as drug trafficking suspects, according to Assistant Police Commissioner General Pol. Gen. Thanitsak Thirasawat.
That prompted the police to raid the house in Pathum Thani province, about 60 km north of Bangkok, where another 656,000 speed pills were seized.
The suspected drug traffickers, identified as Monchai Maneenop, 40, Samai Unchai, 32, Punyanut Bunchiti, 34, and Benchamaphorn Limsuwan, 27, were believed to have taken the drugs from that house for planned delivery to an undisclosed destination in southern Thailand.
They said they had been hired for 100,000 baht (about 3,185 U.S. dollars) in cash from an unidentified Thai national in exchange for the trafficking of the drugs.
The combined haul of over a million tablets of methamphetamine could have made some 210 million baht (about 6.7 million U.S. dollars) in sale to a blackmarket, Pol. Gen. Thanitsak said.
In another development, Thai authorities seized 3.5 tons of a smuggled compound, which might possibly be used in the producing of narcotics, in a northwestern border area on Monday.
A Thai immigration unit and army task force attached to Mae Sot district of Tak, about 490 km north of Bangkok, seized 3.5 tons of sodium cyanide, contained in 70 metal drums and hidden aboard a truck in the Thai border district, an immigration official said.
A Myanmar national, identified as Phew Aung, was found as driver of the truck which had crossed the Thai-Myanmar friendship bridge from inside Myanmar and was arrested on charges of smuggling the compound which could possibly be used in the producing of illegal drugs.
Bunches of inexpensive plastic toys and shoes were put on top of the metal drums in the failed bid to camouflage the illegal compound.
