With the fast changes of time and evolving industries, traffickers are also finding different new contraband materials to be smuggled across the borders. Police in Thailand said that the border patrol officers managed to catch a long time smuggler of human semen.
The Thai smuggler, who was identified as Nithinon Srithaniyanan, was arrested by customs official as he was carrying the sperm in a nitrogen tank. According to the police report, the 25-year-old suspect attempted to cross into Laos, at the border crossing of Nong Khai and Vientiane.
The smuggler acted suspiciously, and he was singled out for an inspection. While he was being searched, the authorities found a nitrogen tank containing the six vials of human semen in the man’s bag.
According to the police, Srithaniyanan confessed that he was a long time smuggler, collecting semen from people in Thailand, and then taking the product to a fertility clinic in Laos. The Asian Age reports that the smuggler revealed the semen was to be delivered to a fertility clinic in Vietnam and said that he had carried semen tubes to a hospital in Laos around 12 times as well as to Cambodia 13 times in the past year.
Authorities confirmed that the semen came from people in China and Vietnam. The man made close to Rs 10000 for every trip and was released later on payment of Rs 3.74 lakh as penalty. Although he allegedly produced certificates of the semen coming from Chinese and Vietnamese men, he was booked for violating Thai surrogacy laws.
In 2015, Thailand banned foreigners from paying Thai women to act as surrogates following a string of scandals in the once thriving industry. Cambodia followed with a total ban last year.
This has coincided with a rise in the number of Laos-linked surrogacy agencies and fertility clinics, reported AFP news agency.
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