PHUKET: An officer has been dismissed from Thailand's police force for his part in the abduction of five Rohingya as seven more boatpeople have vanished from a family shelter north of Phuket.

Senior Sergeant Veerayut Ferngfull is no longer a member of the Royal Thai Police, the Commander of Police in Phang Nga Province, Major General Chalit Kaewyarat, confirmed in a short telephone conversation this week.

It's believed that Senior Sergeant Veerayut transferred from the Marine Police to the regular land-based force to head up a new Phang Nga police task force assigned to intercept boatpeople.

The police in Phang Nga operate a patrol boat in the same way as the Royal Thai Navy and Marine Police along the Andaman coast, where thousands of Rohingya have been captured and trafficked in the past few years.

The senior sergeant's dismissal - his only punishment - is believed to be the first formal admission by authorities of a connection between renegade officers in uniform and people traffickers on the Andaman coast between Phuket and Ranong, a port on the border with Burma.

Thousands of Rohingya who landed in Thailand or were apprehended at sea are believed to have been on-sold to complete their journey from trouble-torn Rakhine state in Burma, where ethnic cleansing is rife, to Malaysia, where as Muslims they hope to find sanctuary.

In January, for reasons that have yet to be made public, officials in Thailand interrupted the people-smuggling trade by raiding secret trafficers' camps and intercepting Rohingya boats.

As a result, about 2000 Rohingya have been detained in Thailand with a self-imposed six-month deadline for the Thai Government to find them a destination and determine their status and their futures.

Thailand is reluctant to declare the Rohingya as refugees for fear it could spark a huge influx of unwanted boatpeople.

But because Thailand declines to accept the alternative - to insist that Burma stops persecuting the Rohingya - many more are expected to take to the sea and land in Thailand next ''sailing season,'' from October onwards.

Although no new boats are arriving at this time of the year, the presence of Rohingya women and children in shelters in Thailand has allowed opportunist local traffickers to continue to operate.

Senior Sergeant Veerayut was sacked for driving a getaway vehicle that gave three women and two children the chance to abscond from a family shelter, only to be abducted.

The women left the shelter voluntarily in expectation that they would be reunited with their menfolk in Malaysia once cash changed hands. But they found themselves kidnapped.

One man in the getaway vehicle with Senior Sergeant Veerayut is alleged to have raped one of the women at knifepoint, then repeatedly over several days.

Investigators are continuing to compile evidence against Korlimula Ramahatu, 26, an illegal migrant who is believed to have been just one of several traffickers who live in the Andaman coast region.

Meanwhile, most of the Rohingya being held in Thailand continue to aspire to join friends or families in Malaysia as soon as they can.

Despite the earlier abduction and rape, another group comprising three women and four children went over the wall from the same shelter in the holiday town of Khao Lak on Thursday night.

The shelter's staff, who have been doing all they can to provide help and welfare, were not able to prevent the escape, which follows a large-scale defection from the family refuge on Phuket.

Rohingya men, kept in cramped conditions behind bars in Immigration centres scattered across Thailand, are less able to flee when they please.

Recent reports list five deaths because of disease and poor conditions at the detention centre in Sadao, Songkhla.

But in Phang Nga's Immigration centre, where secret television footage earlier this year showed appalling cramped conditions, up to 20 people among the 260 inmates are now being allowed one hours' exercise at a time.

Ramandan began this week and with a month of fasting obligatory for Muslims between dawn and sundown, the likelihood of more deaths in custody grows stronger.

The new Minister for Social Development and Human Security, Paveena Hongsakul, called officials to Bangkok for meetings late this week. The talks were aimed at resolving how the captive Rohingya should be treated.

With a background in human rights and welfare, the new minister is reckoned to give the boatpeole being held in Thailand their best hope of a solution that does not involve being returned to Burma.

However, there are still elements within Thailand's military who are believed to want the Rohingya held as long as possible in poor conditions in Thailand as a deterrent to others.

The six-month deadline for a decision on Thailand's course of action is two weeks away.