Thai police probing into 'bribe' in Chhota Rajan escape

BANGKOK, NOV. 26. The Thai police, humiliated by the escape of Chhota Rajan from a supposedly tightly-guarded hospital room, said today they were investigating reports he had bribed a police general to gain his freedom.

``We've seen the press reports this morning, but the national police chief, Mr. Pornsak Durongkavibulya, told me he did not believe in that allegation,'' the national police spokesman, Mr. Pongsapat Pongcharoen, told Reuters.

``However, police general Pornsak will not sit idly to the news as he has already ordered a probe into this report,'' he said.

Local newspapers quoted Chhota Rajan's former lawyer as saying that the fugitive told him by telephone he had paid 25 million baht (600,000 dollars) to a two-star police general for his freedom. The Thai language newspaper Kao Sod published what it said was a transcript of a telephone conversation between Rajan and his former lawyer, Sirichai Piyapichetkul. It quoted Rajan as saying, in a call to Sirichai around midnight on Friday last that he escaped using an emergency exit.

A member of the police investigation team has previously said there was evidence that Rajan used rock climbing gear to descend from a fourth floor window of the hospital on Friday without being noticed by seven policemen guarding his room. ``The story exists only in Indian movies. I am a very heavy man. I used the emergency exit to escape from the hospital,'' Rajan was quoted as saying.

According to the transcript, Rajan said he was to leave Thailand by boat, heading for a country in south-east Asia which was not specified and then possibly West Asia. The daily quoted a hospital security guard as saying that a chubby, Indian- looking man tipped him 500 baht for hailing a cab for him.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : International
Previous : China for projects in Mekong basin
Next     : Alliance decides to admit Sharif party