Section 108: Act of violence against the King
Statutory text (Thai original)
ผู้ใดกระทำการประทุษร้ายต่อพระองค์ หรือเสรีภาพของพระมหากษัตริย์ ต้องระวางโทษประหารชีวิต หรือจำคุกตลอดชีวิต ผู้ใดพยายามกระทำการเช่นว่านั้น ต้องระวางโทษเช่นเดียวกัน ถ้าการกระทำนั้นมีลักษณะอันน่าจะเป็นอันตรายแก่พระชนม์ ผู้กระทำต้องระวางโทษประหารชีวิต ผู้ใดกระทำการใดอันเป็นการตระเตรียมเพื่อประทุษร้ายต่อพระองค์ หรือเสรีภาพของพระมหากษัตริย์ หรือรู้ว่ามีผู้จะกระทำการประทุษร้ายต่อพระองค์ หรือเสรีภาพของพระมหากษัตริย์ กระทำการใดอันเป็นการช่วยปกปิดไว้ ต้องระวางโทษจำคุกตั้งแต่สิบหกปีถึงยี่สิบปี
English translation
Whoever commits an act of violence against the person or the liberty of the King shall be liable to the death penalty or to imprisonment for life.
Whoever attempts to commit such an act shall be liable to the same punishment.
If the act is of a nature likely to endanger the life of the King, the offender shall be liable to the death penalty.
Whoever does any act in preparation for an act of violence against the person or the liberty of the King, or who, knowing that a person is going to commit an act of violence against the person or the liberty of the King, does any act to help conceal it, shall be liable to imprisonment from sixteen years to twenty years.
ThaiLawOnline translation, written from the Thai original and verified
Firm annotation
Section 108 covers violence against the person or the liberty of the King, short of killing. The base penalty is death or imprisonment for life, with an attempt punished the same way. Where the act is of a nature likely to endanger the King's life the penalty is death. As with Section 107, preparation and concealment are drawn into liability, which the general part would not otherwise reach.
Why this matters in practice
Section 108 covers violence against the person or the liberty of the King, as distinct from killing him, which is Section 107. The punishment is death or life imprisonment, and death alone where the act was of a kind likely to endanger His Majesty's life. An attempt carries the same punishment as the completed act, stated in the section itself, so the reduction in Section 80 is unavailable, and the section also reaches acts of preparation and the concealment of another's plan. Section 111 makes a supporter liable to the same punishment as a principal. The element is a physical act against the King's person or liberty rather than any form of expression, which is what separates this offence from Section 112. Violence against the Queen, the Heir-apparent or the Regent is Section 110, which carries no death penalty.
Cited in 9 Supreme Court decisions (1984 to 2015)
Selected citing decisions
- Decision 3377/2558 (2015)
- Decision 7760/2556 (2013)
- Decision 1835/2545 (2002)
- Decision 3066/2527 (1984)
- Decision 4658/2546 (2003)
- Decision 5905/2537 (1994)
- Decision 6752/2545 (2002)
- Decision 13583/2558 (2015)
This list is selected automatically, weighted towards judgments that turn on this section rather than ones that merely recite it when passing sentence. It has not yet been reviewed by the firm.
Most often cited alongside
- Section 29 6
- Section 110 6
- Section 91 5
- Section 30 5
- Section 32 4
- Section 33 4
Sections that appear in the same judgments as this one most often. The figure is the number of decisions.
Counted across the firm's corpus of 83,652 Supreme Court decisions, 1921 to 2026. The count is complete; the stated year range trims rare outliers so it describes where the citations actually sit. These figures are computed by us and are not official court statistics. How we count these, and what we measured
Cite this section
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Plain citation
Penal Code, s. 108 (Thailand) -
Academic citation
Penal Code (Thailand), s. 108. ThaiLawOnline, https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-penal-code/section-108/ (accessed 21 August 2026). -
Thai citation
ป.อ. มาตรา 108 -
Permalink
https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-penal-code/section-108/ -
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<blockquote cite="https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-penal-code/section-108/"><p>Whoever commits an act of violence against the person or the liberty of the King shall be liable to the death penalty or to imprisonment for life. Whoever attempts to commit such an act shall be liable to the same punishment. If the act is…</p><footer>Penal Code, s. 108 (Thailand) — <a href="https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-penal-code/section-108/">ThaiLawOnline</a></footer></blockquote>
The Thai text is authoritative. The English is an unofficial translation by ThaiLawOnline, free to reuse with attribution.