Teenager killed but perpetrator still missing

_{By Hseng Khio Fah
6 February 2009}

Nang Awm, 12, was found dead in Mae Hok creek, 7 miles northeast of Tachilek, by the villagers on 26 January.

She had disappeared since she left home on 24 January for fishing, said a local villager who declined to be named.

“She went fishing there everyday. She returned in the evening to sell her fish in the villages. Some days she got about 1 kg or 1.5 kg,” said a local source.

She was a villager from Fangmin, Fangmin village tract, and supported her family by fishing. She lived with her father Sai Hseng and elder sister Nang Hsom and her family was a poor one.

She had reportedly been beaten all over the body. She was thought to be beaten and killed after being raped. Villagers then went to appeal her case at Tachilek police station after they brought her remains back to the village. Police came to the site of crime and found one male slipper left on the bank of the creek.

After seeing that slipper, villagers suggested that the perpetrator was one of the workers from lower Burma who was working at a rich man’s house in their village.

“We knew that it was his slipper,” said a villager.

He then was summoned to the police station for interrogation. Two more suspects were arrested afterwards, said the source.

But three days later, all three were released.

“There wasn’t enough evidence to keep them,” a villager quoted police as saying.

Many have accused the police of taking bribes from the local rich man.