MOULMEIN, Mon State — New Mon State Party (NMSP) members handed over a notorious criminal to the Ye Township Police Force in Mon State on Wednesday after holding him for more than a month, according to party officers and police.
“We handed Akyine over to the police this morning,” officer Nai Pin of NMSP’s liaison office in Ye Township told The Irrawaddy.
Akyine is a local of Toe Tet Village in southern Ye Township and is accused of committing a string of robberies across southern areas of the township as well as Pauk Pin Gwin Village in Yebyu Township, Tenasserim Division.
“He is now in Ye Township, we are still investigating and then we will hold him on remand,” said police officer Kyaw Myint, who escorted Akyine from NMSP officials in Dawei District.
Members of NMSP Dawei District chapter apprehended Akyine in April and kept him in custody at NMSP’s Yay Chaung Pya headquarters before transferring him to police Wednesday, Lt-Col Nyan Tun, a member of the NMSP central executive committee, told The Irrawaddy.
“We arrested him around one month ago, before we held our central executive meeting. He is a henchman of notorious Avin. We captured him near Han Gan Village and confined him at our headquarters,” said Lt-Col Nyan Tun.
Avin was the leader of a now-defunct powerful criminal gang which was active in Ye Township from 1995 to 2011. In February 2012, Avin, along with his gang members including Akyine, surrendered their arms to the Burma Army 19th Military Operations Command (MOC-19) based in Ye Township as part of a deal with the military.
This year, Akyine started to rob alone. On Feb. 17 this year, he allegedly robbed houses in Thae Khon Village, holding the village administrator as a hostage, the administrator of Kaw Hlaing Village Nai Shwe Moe told The Irrawaddy.
“He fired two shots [in the air], and took away gold necklace and rings worth around 4 million kyats that day,” said the administrator.
In the fourth week of March, he sent a letter to a monastery abbot in Han Gan Village, threatening to disturb a planned religious ceremony if he was not paid 10 million kyats. The money was not paid, but he did not do anything.
Before the Burmese New Year in April, he also sent a letter to Pauk Pin Gwin Village, asking them to give him 10 million kyats. Villagers did not hand over the money, so Akyin kidnapped people outside the village and took around 1.5 million kyats.