Section 213: Liability of members and leaders for the gang's offence
Statutory text (Thai original)
ถ้าสมาชิกอั้งยี่หรือพรรคพวกซ่องโจรคนหนึ่งคนใดได้กระทำความผิดตามความมุ่งหมายของอั้งยี่หรือซ่องโจรนั้น สมาชิกอั้งยี่หรือพรรคพวกซ่องโจรที่อยู่ด้วยในขณะกระทำความผิด หรืออยู่ด้วยในที่ประชุมแต่ไม่ได้คัดค้านในการตกลงให้กระทำความผิดนั้น และบรรดาหัวหน้า ผู้จัดการ หรือผู้มีตำแหน่งหน้าที่ในอั้งยี่หรือซ่องโจรนั้น ต้องระวางโทษตามที่บัญญัติไว้สำหรับความผิดนั้นทุกคน
English translation
If any member of a secret society or of a robber gang commits an offence in accordance with the purpose of that secret society or robber gang, then the members of the secret society or of the robber gang who are present at the commission of the offence, or who are present at the meeting but do not object to the agreement to commit that offence, and all the leaders, managers, or persons holding office in that secret society or robber gang, shall every one of them be liable to the punishment prescribed for that offence.
ThaiLawOnline translation, written from the Thai original and verified
Firm annotation
This is the collective liability provision. Where a member commits an offence in line with the group's purpose, three categories of person are punished as principals: members who are present at the commission of the offence; members who are present at the meeting but do not object to the agreement to commit it; and all the leaders, managers, or persons holding office in that secret society or robber gang. Silence at the meeting is therefore treated as participation. The third category is the section's sharpest feature, because it is not confined to a single head and does not depend on presence: every leader, manager or office-holder is liable whether present at the commission or at the meeting or not. It should be distinguished from section 211, which punishes mere attendance at a meeting of a secret society or robber gang, and from section 212, which punishes providing a meeting place or lodging, recruiting members, supporting the group with property, and helping to dispose of property obtained.
Why this matters in practice
What decides these cases is status and presence, because liability under this section does not require the accused to have committed the offence personally. For a member who was at the meeting the section leaves one way out, objecting to the agreement to commit the offence, so evidence of that objection carries a great deal of weight. A leader, manager or office-holder has no such way out: liability attaches to the position and does not depend on being at the scene or at the meeting at all. The most direct defence is therefore to displace membership, or the holding of office, at the outset, rather than to deny taking part in the act. It is also worth checking whether the facts fall instead under section 211 or section 212, whose elements and penalties are different.
Cited in 14 Supreme Court decisions (1973 to 2025)
Selected citing decisions
- Decision 2273/2556 (2013)
- Decision 4548/2540 (1997)
- Decision 2495/2516 (1973)
- Decision 2614/2568 (2025)
- Decision 3812/2568 (2025)
- Decision 2857/2564 (2021)
- Decision 11107-11108/2554 (2011)
- Decision 3313/2537 (1994)
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 83 14
- Section 91 13
- Section 210 13
- Section 90 13
- Section 78 12
- Section 209 10
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
Related guides on ThaiLawOnline
Cite this section
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Plain citation
Penal Code, s. 213 (Thailand) -
Academic citation
Penal Code (Thailand), s. 213. ThaiLawOnline, https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-penal-code/section-213/ (accessed 6 September 2026). -
Thai citation
ป.อ. มาตรา 213 -
Permalink
https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-penal-code/section-213/ -
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<blockquote cite="https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-penal-code/section-213/"><p>If any member of a secret society or of a robber gang commits an offence in accordance with the purpose of that secret society or robber gang, then the members of the secret society or of the robber gang who are present at the commission…</p><footer>Penal Code, s. 213 (Thailand): <a href="https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-penal-code/section-213/">ThaiLawOnline</a></footer></blockquote>
The Thai text is authoritative. The English is an unofficial translation by ThaiLawOnline, free to reuse with attribution.