The Battambang Provincial Court prosecutor on November 7 charged a deputy police chief of Kors Kralor district with the murder of his mentally-ill brother-in-law, which occurred back in August in Dounba commune’s Basrae village.
Battambang provincial court spokesman Duong Savorn told The Post on November 7 that the case had been referred to an investigating judge.
“The prosecutor has charged [Dak Sokha] with murder under Article 199 of the Criminal Code,” he said.
Dounba commune police chief Chan Piseth said the victim in the murder was Yang Sarath, 45, also known as Sak. He was a motorcycle repairman living in the village who had married the older sister of Sokha.
He said that as far as motives for the crime go, the authorities have yet to get an explanation from the suspect.
Sarath began to suffer from mental illness beginning in 2018 but he never caused any trouble prior to an incident on the day he vanished, to the best of the police’s knowledge, Piseth said.
He added that the victim was given psychiatric drugs by the World Vision Organisation NGO and he was taking them regularly.
In 2019, the victim locked himself in his home and refused to open the door to let his wife and children in for three days, but he hadn’t abused them physically at any point that the authorities were aware of, according to Piseth.
Piseth said that however, on August 26, the victim had assaulted a police officer with a steel pole but the officer was aware that Sarath was mentally ill so he was taken into custody for education only.
That evening Sokha wrote a letter requesting that Sarath be taken to the psychiatric ward and no one saw the victim alive after that day.
He said the victim was missing from August 26-31 until his body was found in the forest by a farmer who was ploughing fields nearby and he reported it to the police.
He added that a forensic examination was conducted on the body and it was determined that the back of the victim’s head and the left-side of his forehead had been crushed by a blunt object and this was the likely cause of his death.
“It took two months and four days for the provincial and district police to investigate the case fully and identify the killer,” said Piseth.
