The Criminal Court yesterday rejected the request of two teachers accused of raping some of their students to let renowned pathologist Pornthip Rojanasunand conduct DNA tests on them instead of forensic police.

"We might petition directly to Khunying Pornthip," said Kingkeaw Yommuang, the attorney of the two teachers from Prachanukul School in Bangkok's Sai Mai district.

Lorn Sorakanit, 58, and Pimol Chunsri, 48, who were arrested on suspicion of serial rape of

eight-year-old students, have

been ordered to undergo forensic tests at the police's forensic department.

However, the suspects want Pornthip, acting deputy director of the Central Institute of Forensic Science, to hold the test for them instead because they do not believe in the fairness of the police in the Division for Suppression of Crimes against Children and Women.

The court declined the defendants' petition and ordered them to meet forensic police.

The defence lawyer said his clients might ask police for a new investigating team because they suspect that their case was being treated improperly.

"Police have given [media] interviews that they already had enough evidence for the case but when we met the police today, they said the investigation had not been completed yet.

"It shows that police might not have enough evidence to prove the suspects' guilt," the lawyer said.

Lorn said he knew Pavena Hongsakul, president of the Pavena Foundation for Women and Children, who took the alleged victims to the police station to file their complaint. He showed reporters a photo of him taken with Pavena when she presided over the funeral of his daughter.

The two teachers earlier said Pavena was trying to incriminate them as she might harbour a grudge against them as a result of losing the last election, when Pavena was a candidate for the Sai Mai constituency and they were ballot officers at a polling station. But Pavena denied that she had ever known Lorn before.

Lorn and Pimol went to the Division for the Suppression of Crimes against Children and Women for further inquiry and ran into the grandmother of one of the alleged victims.

The angry grandmother walked up Lorn to condemn him and tried to attack him before the lawyer and police stepped in to stop her.

"I can't stand this anymore, how could they do that with the small girls and right in the school," she told reporters in tears.

Parents of the alleged victims said they needed the police to cancel the suspects' bail because after they were released, the parents received many life-threatening calls from anonymous people asking them to drop the case.

Police traced the calls and found they were made at public phone booths in the school's community.

Anan Siriphassaraporn, deputy clerk of the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration, criticised the principal of Prachanukul School for the assembly that the school held on Tuesday for co-teachers and students to show support for the two accused teachers.

"What the school did might put pressure on the girls and their parents," he said.