Thai Judge Commits Suicide In Chiang Mai

A judge who shot himself in a courtroom in Thailand’s troubled Deep South last year, when he alleged that superiors had pressured him into convicting murder suspects, died Saturday of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a separate shooting, police said.

Judge Kanakorn Pianchana died at a hospital in northern Chiang Mai province after being shot and wounded at a home in Doi Saked district, a local police official told BenarNews.

“I was informed by the McCormick Hospital in Chiang Mai that a judge shot himself and he expired at the hospital. We discovered he was Kanakorn Pianchana, former chief judge of the Yala first court who tried killing himself in a Yala provincial court,” said Lt. Col. Satitchai Nitayawan, deputy chief of the Mae Ping station in Chiang Mai.

Doctors at the hospital could not save Kanakorn, 50, according to Sarawut Benjakul, secretary-general of the Office of the Judiciary, the Bangkok Post reported. The shooting occurred on Saturday morning at Kanakorn’s home in Chiang Mai, while the senior judge’s wife and daughter were out, the newspaper said.

Kanakorn had been transferred to a court in Chiang Mai from the far southern region after judicial authorities conducted an investigation into his public suicide attempt in Yala province last October.

In a post on his Facebook page on Friday, the judge expressed fear that he could lose his job over the courtroom shooting, after which police charged him with bringing a gun into a public place without a permit.

Full story: BenarNews

Mariyam Ahmad
Pattani, Thailand