Murdered woman likely Chinese kidnap victim: Police

METROPOLITAN police suspect that the woman who was murdered and her body dumped in an irrigation canal of a deserted banana plantation in Nonthaburi province could be a Chinese student who was kidnapped for ransom on Tuesday night (Mar. 28), Thai Rath newspaper said last night (Apr. 1).

The swollen body of the dead woman who was strangled and stabbed a few times was found partly stuffed in a large sack at this canal by a passing farmer.

Pol. Lt. Gen. Thiti Saengsawang, head of Metropolitan Bureau police, said on Friday (Mar. 31) Mr. Mingkwan Nakhiransakul, 24, a Chinese student adviser at Bangkok Thonburi University, had filed a report at Thammasala police station that Ms. Jin Can, 22, a third-year student majoring in music had disappeared.

Mingkwan said the father of the missing woman, who is a music teacher in China, had contacted him saying a kidnapper had reached him via WeChat app on her mobile phone last Wednesday (Mar. 29) and after sending a photo of her tied up demanded that 500,000 yuan, or around 2.5 million baht, to be transferred to a Chinese account.

As the victim’s father was unsure what was taking place he did not transfer the ransom and after that lost contact with his daughter and now feared for her safety.

Thammasala police checked the victim’s background and found out that she had completed the first and second years of her education by studying online. On March 8 this year she came to Thailand to study the third year at the university.

Video clips from surveillance cameras at the university showed that Ms Jin Can was still at the university on Tuesday evening with there also being people who saw her there. She then took a taxi to a department store in Nonthaburi arriving there at 9.30 p.m. Her father was contacted by the kidnapper after that.

Her disappearance that evening tallies with the preliminary autopsy result of the murdered woman found at the abandoned plantation as she had died around three days ago.

Police are now in the process of verifying the identity of the murdered woman as to whether she could be the missing Chinese student, Pol. Lt. Gen. Thiti.

CAPTION:

The cordoned off area at the deserted banana plantation where the murdered woman was found yesterday afternoon, April 1, 2023. Photo: Thai Rath

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