An autopsy performed on Thanakorn found Arabic characters tattooed on his back and arms, prompting the police to investigate if the attack had been religious and if the vandal had any ties to Muslim extremists. However, Thanakorn's father, Sayant Pakdeepol, explained that his son had received treatment for psychiatric problems and that mental illness was the cause of the attack. Sayant condemned the fatal beating of his son as an "overreaction". "Doing something like this is not the act of people with good beliefs, of those with real faith in Brahma", Sayant told The Nation newspaper. "Murder is an immoral act and people with morality would not have done what they did". Just days after the destruction of the Erawan Shrine, then Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra visited the site and paid his respects to the fragments of the Hindu deity. A white cloth was placed over the shrine to conceal the statue's absence. Officials reopened the site to the public, displaying photographs of the statue for worshippers to pay their respects. At a rally the following day, government critic Sondhi Limthongkul claimed the destruction of the statue was an attempt by the Prime Minister to maintain his political power through black magic. However, Thanakorn's father rejected this, telling The Nation that Sondhi Limthongkul "is the biggest liar I have ever seen." An identical statue of Brahma was placed in the shrine on 21 May 2006 at 11:39, at the instant the sun was directly overhead. Officials from the Department of Religious Affairs and the Maha Brahma Foundation said the new statue was made of plaster with a mixture of gold, bronze, and other precious metals, along with some fragments of the original. A duplicate statue made entirely of metal had also been cast in the same mold and is kept for safety in the National Museum of Thailand. 2015 bombing On 17 August 2015, at 18:55 local time, an explosive device composed of three kilograms of TNT stuffed in a metal pipe and wrapped in white cloth inside a backpack was detonated near the Erawan Shrine, killing 20 bystanders and injuring 125. Bomb disposal units checked two other suspicious objects but found no more bombs. An analyst with IHS Jane's suggested the attack had been carried out by the Pan-Turkic Turkish ultra-nationalist organization Grey Wolves in retaliation for the Thai government's deporting Uyghur terrorist suspects to China, instead of