After a week of complaints about a smell coming from an overgrown empty piece of land in Patan sub district, locals finally ventured in to investigate, only to find a decomposed body of a man.
Initially no one could identify the man and it was feared that his remains were not in good enough condition to identify him. However, on 17th June Suttipant Suksaund, 29 told police that he suspects that the man was his friend.
According to him, the deceased was Papu Arba, 42, from Chiang Dao District. He, along with Suttipant, often waited by the roadside to be hired as daily labourers and became friends. Papu, said Sutthipant, was a flirt and had hit on him a few times, but was known to sleep around and wasn’t often to be found in one place on any night, he said. He also said that Papu was an alcoholic who always had a bottle on him.
However, it was unusual for him to have disappeared for a whole week, so when he heard of a body being found, he came to have a look and recognised the clothing as his friend’s.
Police say there is no obvious cause of death and that Papu’s body is undergoing autopsy. Police speculate that he may have been drunk and tripped and fell.