On 5 June 2020, the police at Chai Wan Police Station in Udon Thani Province received a 191 call from a Temple in Udon Thani, reporting that a monk had hung himself. The temple was located at Wat Udom Thep Nimit, Ban Pa Kao, Phon Sung Subdistrict, Chai Wan District, Udon Thani Province.
On the way to the scene, many villagers were already watching the scene from their roofs which could see into the monk’s wooden pole house. The police found the body of the chancellor, Chaiyawiriyaro, aged 57, he was the abbot of Wat Paudom Thep Nimit. He had torn his yellow robes to make a rope and tied one end to his neck and the other end to the ceiling of his cubicle of prayer.
His shoes still sat at the bottom of the stairs, as a fellow monk stepped over them to climb the stairs to his humble abode. Other monks had wondered where he was, not suspecting anything different. But when he climbed up to knock on abbots door, he was shocked to see the abbot hanging from the ceiling. He ran and called the village headman to check and they called the police immediately.
After the post-mortem examination by a doctor, it was confirmed that the abbot’s cause of death was suffocation. After Investigating the crime scene, there were no signs of fighting, concluding that the abbot had committed suicide. However, now they are investigating why he hung himself. Questions are being raised about his mental condition.
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