About 70 small plastic bags containing cocaine were found in the bag of a foreigner who entered Thailand.
Since they were not found at the time of entry, authorities believe that these plastic bags were originally hidden in the suspect's stomach.
According to Thai PBS, Thai customs authorities arrested a man in his 40s from Sierra Leone on charges of illegal possession of drugs on the 22nd.
The man, who arrived at Suvarnabhumi Airport on a flight from Guinea-Bissau in Africa on the 12th, was already suspected by Thai authorities before arrival.
Upon arrival, customs officials thoroughly inspected his belongings, but he did not find any drugs.
However, officials did not give up.
The man was staying at a quarantined hotel and checked out on the 23rd, stopped and looked through his bag.
74 small plastic bags of cocaine were found in the bag.
It weighed 1.2 kg and was estimated to be 3.8 million baht (about 140 million won) in terms of market value.
Authorities believe that the man swallowed the plastic bag of cocaine at the time of entry to avoid a search and then pulled it out while staying in an isolated hotel, the broadcaster said.
Swallowing drug bags and putting them in your stomach to cross the border is a tactic often used by drug smuggling organizations in Southeast Asia.
In 2017, an African woman who was carrying 1.2 kg of cocaine in plastic wrap and swallowing it was caught at an X-ray checkpoint at an airport in Thailand to avoid crackdowns.
In 2019, a Kenyan man who tried to smuggle over 60 plastic bags (1.2 kg) of cocaine into Thailand was caught by an airport X-ray.
In 2016, 400g of drugs wrapped in condoms were found in the stomach of a Bhutanese man in his 40s who died in Bangkok.
(Photo=Thai Ministry of Finance News Facebook capture, Yonhap News)