Police are looking for a man of Chinese appearance who intentionally placed bags at the Brahma Shrine in front of the BTS Building on Phahonyothin Road, Bangkok, Thursday night and immediately left the scene.
The presence of the suspicious bags sparked panic among visitors to the shrine, and police were alerted. An explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) team rushed to the scene to investigate.
The area around the shrine was cordoned off, as an EOD officer carefully opened the bags, in which only clothes, a cell phone and a wallet with an ID card of a Chinese man and some other personal effects were found.
Pol Lt-Col Worapat Sookthai, deputy superintendent of Bang Sue police station, said that he thinks that the man did not intend to commit any violent act and was not connected with any extremist group, but might have just wanted to cause panic.
He also said he had contacted immigration police to check the entry record of the Chinese national named on the ID card.
In August 2015, an explosion at the Brahma statue at the Erawan Shrine in central Bangkok killed 20 people and was suspected of being linked to the forced deportation of Uyghurs to China.
