Thai police display illicit drugs seized in Sukhothai Province during a press briefing at Narcotics Suppression Bureau in Bangkok, Thailand, Sept. 18, 2018. Thai Narcotics Suppression Bureau said on late Monday that 2.5 billion baht (76.7 million U.S. dollars) worth of methamphetamine pills and heroin were intercepted on Sunday in Thailand's Upper Central Province of Sukhothai. (Xinhua/Rachen Sageamsak)
BANGKOK, Sept. 18 (Xinhua) -- Thai Narcotics Suppression Bureau said on late Monday that 2.5 billion baht (76.7 million U.S. dollars) worth of methamphetamine pills and heroin were intercepted on Sunday in Thailand's Upper Central Province of Sukhothai.
The bureau said police found 10 million meth pills and 35 kg of heroin in a pick-up truck believed bound for a third country.
Narcotic police stopped a pick-up truck on Sukhothai-Tak detour road in Sukhothai and found the drugs hidden beneath sacks of chicken feces.
The trucker driver and three women, all of them Hmong hilltribe people, were arrested.
The illicit drugs were neatly packed and wrapped in plastic and placed on the truck bed beneath sacks of chicken feces.
The driver, identified as Prawit sae Ma, told the police that he was paid 700,000 baht (21,473 U.S. dollars) to pick up the chicken feces in Phob Phra district of Tak and then drive to Phya Mengrai district in Chiang Rai where the drugs were placed under the sacks of chicken feces and then continued his journey to Ayutthaya where the drug shipment was supposed to be dropped off at a rendezvous to be picked up by a drug gang.
Thai Narcotics Suppression Bureau did not reveal the name of the third country where the drugs were supposedly destined for.
The bureau did say however that with Thailand's geographical location, traffickers tend to use Thailand as a transit point to ship the drugs to third countries.
It said the traffickers generally store the drug temporarily in Bangkok or in other central provinces before shipping them to the south in preparation for smuggling across the border.
