NAKHON RATCHASIMA: A woman believed by her relatives to have died from Covid-19 last week turned out to have been murdered, according to police.
Pol Col Paibul Khunkham, chief of the Non Daeng police station, said on Sunday that police found Dokmai Praditja, 50, lying dead in a bedroom of her house in Ban Samphaniang village in Non Daeng district last Wednesday night. At that time relatives believed she died of Covid-19 because she had just contracted the disease and there were no traces of a struggle.
However, police sent her body to Non Daeng Hospital for autopsy. Forensic doctors at the hospital found strangle marks on the neck and concluded the woman died of suffocation.
Police then forwarded the body to Maharat Nakhon Ratchasima Hospital for another autopsy. There doctors found broken ribs and an impact wound on the back of the head. The findings proved that Dokmai was murdered, Pol Col Paibul said.
Her relatives said that the woman lived with her husband, father and son. The son was recently sent to her former husband’s house in the same village when she got Covid-19. Her 78-year-old father had a hearing impairment, and her new husband left for Yasothon province in March to help his mother grow rice.
On Wednesday last week her former husband arrived at her house to seek more school uniforms for their son. He found the house was locked from the inside and called her relatives. They broke into the house and found her body.
Samarn Praditja, 53-year-old sister of the deceased, said Dokmai lay dead face down with her ankles crossed.
Thanawat Panyanam, the present husband, aged 43, returned from Yasothon. He said he had lived with his wife for nearly a decade, and they were labourers. They had talked by phone about general topics until her relatives informed him of her death last Wednesday night.
Pol Col Paibul said police interrogated 15 people and narrowed the suspects down to three persons.