(AFP) The police today said they would help track down the fugitive son of a top Thai MP accused of shooting a Thai police officer in cold blood last month.

"Malaysian police will cooperate with Thai authorities," an officer with the police media centre told AFP .

Doungchalerm Yubamrung has been on the run since the October 27 shooting at a Bangkok nightclub, but his father Chalerm - a leading figure in the coalition government - insists he is innocent and the victim of a conspiracy.

The police spokesman said the Association of Southeast Asian Countries (Asean) have an intelligence sharing body, Aseanapol, which would undertake the task of trying to find Doungchalerm if he is in Malaysia.

But the spokesman said they have not received any official request from Thailand.

The case has provoked outrage in Thailand, where both ordinary people and political commentators are infuriated at the prospect of the scion of an influential and feared family escaping justice.

No leads

Thai police chief General Sant Sarutanond, who is under increasing pressure to collar Doungchalerm, said special branch officers were exploring the possibility that the fugitive was hiding out across the border.

"I have sent a team of special branch police to Malaysia to coordinate with their Malaysian counterparts to look for him," he said, adding so far there had been no positive leads.

Police commandos have conducted three searches of Chalerm's sprawling family compound in the Bangkok suburbs, but found no trace of his youngest son.

Doungchalerm, a serving army officer, has featured regularly in newspaper headlines over the years along with his two older brothers, thanks to a series of late-night brawls and brushes with the law.

Chalerm has claimed his son came back to the family home after the shooting, but was forced to flee Bangkok because he feared being lynched amid the relentless media focus on the case.