{"id":76423,"date":"2026-02-19T19:07:49","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T10:07:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/feb\/19\/thai-police-undercover-lion-dancers-catch-thief"},"modified":"2026-02-19T19:07:49","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T10:07:49","slug":"thai-police-go-undercover-as-lion-dancers-to-catch-thief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=76423","title":{"rendered":"Thai police go undercover as lion dancers to catch thief"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Officers devise unusual plan to arrest man suspected of stealing about $64,000 worth of Buddhist artefacts<\/p>\n<p>Thai police donned a lion costume during this week\u2019s lunar new year festivities to arrest a man accused of stealing about $64,000 worth of Buddhist artefacts.<\/p>\n<p>Dressed as a red-and-yellow lion, officers made the arrest on Wednesday evening after responding to a report this month of a home burglary in the suburbs of Bangkok.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/feb\/19\/thai-police-undercover-lion-dancers-catch-thief\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Officers devise unusual plan to arrest man suspected of stealing about $64,000 worth of Buddhist artefactsThai police donned a lion costume during this week\u2019s lunar new year festivities to arrest a man accused of stealing about $64,000 worth of Buddhis&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":430,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,211,371,93,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-buddhism","category-religion","category-thailand","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/430"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76423"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76424,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76423\/revisions\/76424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}