BANGKOK // Thai police entered a scandal-hit Buddhist temple on Thursday to search for a monk who has evaded arrest for months in a saga highlighting a split over the nation’s faith.
The search of the powerful and ultra-rich Wat Dammakaya temple on Bangkok’s outskirts comes after Thailand’s junta chief invoked special powers to put its sprawling 1,000-acre compound under military control.
Previous attempts to raid the temple were thwarted after thousands of devotees appeared to defend Phra Dhammachayo, the septuagenarian monk who founded the breakaway Buddhist order in 1970.
The former abbot - who has not been seen in public for month - is believed to be inside the temple, famous for its space-age architecture. He is accused of money laundering and accepting embezzled funds worth 1.2 billion baht (Dh126m) from the jailed owner of a cooperative bank.
Police failed to find the abbott on Thursday but vowed to conttinue their search on Friday.
Thousands of police and soldiers were bussed into the site before dawn on Thursday, locking down roads leading to the vast temple.
The operation followed a sudden order endorsed by junta leader Prayut Chan-ocha that gave authorities power to block the entrance.
After an hours-long standoff, police managed to enter one gate and cut the lock off on another. But other entrances were barricaded by scores of seated monks and supporters, forcing police to wait outside as Buddhist chants blasted out over temple loudspeakers. The junta is desperate to avoid clashes with clergy.
Video footage circulated on social media showed a minor scuffle between several officers and orange-robed monks at one gate.
“The Dhammakaya temple has allowed police and DSI officials to carry out a search inside the temple for the suspect,” the head of the DSI, Thailand’s equivalent of the FBI, said after an hours-long standoff.
“If [the abbot] thinks he is innocent he should surrender and enter the judicial process,” said Colonel Paisit Wongmuang.
Sect supporters are believed to be inside the temple alongside monks, whose mantras could be heard outside the temple walls where columns of back-up police patiently waited.
Outside the temple’s gate, a Dhammakaya spokesman said he could not confirm whether the wanted ex-abbot was inside.
“I don’t know his whereabouts – I haven’t seen him in about nine months,” said Phra Sanitwong Wutthiwangso.
Temple staff have previously said the leader is innocent but too ill to be questioned by police.
Historically, Thailand’s secular authorities have been reluctant to intervene in the affairs of the clergy in the Buddhist-majority country.
But hostility towards the Dhammakaya sect has mounted in recent years, with critics from the mainstream Buddhist establishment accusing the temple of promoting a pay-your-way to nirvana philosophy.
* Agence France-Presse
