PHITSANULOK: Religious establishments are supposed to be places of peace and goodwill, however a temple in Phitsanulok lately proved to be something but when a monk who thought a nun had disrespected him responded by beating her.
At 9 am August 21, Maechi Phronchon Chomphukpan, 53, a nun at Wat Ban Khek in Nakhon Thai District, walked into the local district police station together with her face swollen and lined in bruises. There she recounted to Duty Officer Lt Thanaphon Mekbut a bizarre story of intra-wat aggression.
Maechi Phronchon, who had lived at the temple for many years, stated that the previous afternoon she had been walking to the lavatory behind the temple when she passed by a resident monk, identified only as “Phra Nom”, who was sleeping in a hammock. Suddenly the cleric shouted at her, demanding to know why she had not graced him with a wai.
“Nuns have to wai monks each time they pass them,” he exclaimed allegedly in a drunken method.
Interesting apologized, saying that she had not seen him. This was not good enough for Phra Nom, nevertheless. He launched into a tirade of insults so severe that Maechi Phronchon may solely stand cowed, she said.
After his insults had run dry, Phra Nom demanded that Maechi Phronchon go and fetch her bankbook so he might “check that she had not been embezzling temple funds”. Maechi Phronchon refused on the grounds that Phra Nom was just a rank-and-file monk, with no authority to examine her financial data..