Sindhu gets 3 years on 112

On 28 October 2024, Sindhu (pseudonym), then a 28-year-old salesman, was sentenced to three years in prison for a comment that was made on a Facebook page. The sentence was reduced to two years, without suspension.

He was granted bail for an appeal.

On 27 January 2026, the Appeals Court amended that initial sentence by suspending it for three years. It did this because of his young age, he should be given a second chance, provided that he performs activities in honor of the king. The reports do not make clear who chooses the activities.

Initially the charges were under Article 112 and computer crimes laws were for allegedly writing a comment that was defamatory of the king and the queen.

As is common, the complaint against Sindhu was filed by an ultra-royalist. In this instance it was Songchai Niamhom, a self-appointed leader of the tiny King Protection Group, that operates in the southern provinces.

In a strange case before the police and then the Criminal Court in Phatthalung, more than 1000km from where he resided, Sindhu was indicted in June 2022. The page, The MelaengtaD, posted a picture of the king and queen with a message saying that all the annual amount of money they received from the government was always returned to the people: “The King and Queen have never received a salary or received an annual payment of 60 million baht from the government. All money is returned to the people. every baht, every satang.”

The “investigation” alleged that Sindhu was the account owner and it said he posted a response:  “saving money to put in your mouth after your death…”.

Sidhu admitted that he was the account’s owner but testified that he could not access the account and was not the one who wrote the comment.

In what would normally be assumed to be a problem for the prosecutor, a Technology Crime Suppression Division investigation stated that the comment was not found. A cyber security expert testified that the original post’s URL and that of the comment were not aligned with each other.

However, the court was not convinced by Sindhu’s testimony, saying that he had no evidence to prove his testimony. The court also found that the content of the comment was intended to insult the two royals, despite there being no evidence of the post.

Also untroubled by this, the Appeals Court concurred on his “guilt.”