Bangkok: As fresh details and updates take form after last week's Tiger Temple raid in Thailand, the tale gets more gruesome by the minute.
Latest to make the news, are reports of a tiger meat slaughterhouse that was found near the Tiger Temple.
The temple that is famous for allowing people to see, touch and take photographs with tigers, was seiged by the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation on June 1 last week, after the authorities received a tip-off following years of allegations of wildlife trafficking against the temple and its monks.
As per Tech Times, after receiving a tip, the Thai police raided a home in western Thailand's Kanchanaburi province. The isolated house is about 30 miles from the Tiger Temple and is covered by tall fences.
What the four walls of the house held inside it, were enough to confirm the morbid situation. Four live tigers – two males and two females – and a dozen empty cages faced them.
This scenario is what led the authorities to believe that what they had before them was a slaughterhouse and a holding facility for the live animals.
Police colonel Montri Pancharoen, Crime Suppression Division deputy commander who led the raid, told Tech Times that, “We believe it was used by the Tiger Temple to hold live tigers before slaughtering them for their skins, meat and bones to be exported outside the country, or sent to restaurants in Thailand that serve tiger meat to tour groups.”
Several knives, a large chopping board, an enormous refrigerator, various forms of tiger food and other equipment thought to be used to help relocate the animals, were also found at the 'slaughterhouse'.
The police detained two caretakers of the place who claimed that the tigers were the house owner, 68-year-old Thawat Khachornchaikul alias Sia Tong's 'private properties'.
The possibility of Tiger Temple being a supplier is being considered, however, it seems that the temple isn't the only one supplying tigers to illegal smugglers.
As per Tech Times, The DNA of the four live tigers discovered in the alleged slaughterhouse will be compared to the DNA of the tigers retrieved from the Tiger Temple. Montri also said that an investigation will also be carried out to find out if the four slaughterhouse tigers are linked to the three tigers that were reported missing from the Tiger Temple way back in 2014.
