SUPHAN BURI: A man with an intellectual disability has been arrested after he was seen taking a two-year-old Myanmar boy into the sugarcane field where the boy was later found dead.
The arrest came after the boy's parents questioned the results of the first autopsy on their son which showed no sign of physical assault.
Police began the investigation and later obtained a court warrant for the arrest of the 32-year-old suspect on charges of depriving a child of parental care, Pol Maj Gen Khomsak Sumangkaset, chief of Suphan Buri police, told Thai media on Saturday.
The man reportedly admitted to taking the boy to play inside a sugarcane plantation in U Thong district before the boy fell into a ditch. He told investigators that he tried to pull the boy out of the ditch but he was too heavy.
Salui Piew, 2, the son of migrant workers from Myanmar, went missing on Dec 17 when he went out to play near the Suphan Buri plantation where his parents worked. The boy was found dead near a ditch on the plantation on Dec 25.
The autopsy showed no injuries or broken bones. Doctors said the boy had died on the same day he had gone missing.
Pol Maj Gen Khomsak said investigators had also questioned a three-year-old Myanmar girl who had been playing in the area. She told police the boy had gone with a man.
The 32-year-old man, who lived in a house about 1km away from the plantation, was taken for questioning after he was seen playing with the boy before the latter went missing. Psychologists were invited to take part in the questioning.
The boy's parents had vowed not to cremate the body of their son until the truth about how he had died was revealed.
Police later sent the boy's body to the Justice Ministry's Central Institute of Forensic Science (CIFS) for a second autopsy.
Dr Worawee Waiyawut, director of the DNA Division at the CIFS, said the autopsy results showed no traces of physical assault or broken bones, Thai media reported.
