A MURDER investigation was launched yesterday after the burned body of a man believed to be missing Scot Gordon Fletcher was found in dense jungle in the Thai resort of Pattaya.

Mr Fletcher, 60, was reported missing to Tayside Police by his daughter in February. His body was so badly burned that police were able to identify him only from a bank card found at the scene.

As the murder investigation was launched, police were trying to identify the body of another western tourist, aged 25 to 30, whose body was discovered in the grounds of a Pattaya hotel, 60 miles south of Bangkok.

Mr Fletcher's body was found by a local on Tuesday in a wooded area near the Thai Chai Mongkor Buddhist temple, which has been sealed off while forensic tests are carried out. Newspaper reports said he had been shot in the head before being deliberately burnt during a fire to clear woodland.

Last night Mr Fletcher's daughter, Louise, 24, who contacted police after he failed to make contact over Christmas, said she was devastated by reports that her father had been murdered.

She said the last time she spoke to her father he was ''having a good time and enjoying himself''.

Staff at the Thai Thana apartment block where Mr Fletcher lived claimed he was a heavy drinker and known troublemaker, who had been arrested for disorderly behaviour on several occasions. It is thought he disappeared after going for a drink with a stranger.

However, Ms Fletcher described her father as a ''peaceable person who would get up and walk away from any trouble at all''.

She added: ''He drank very little and generally did not drink at all. We are told he was a known troublemaker, but that is not the father we know.''

Tayside Police declined to comment before an official identification was made. A spokeswoman for the Foreign Office said that would take several days but Mr Fletcher's family are expecting the worst.

The Foreign Office spokeswoman added: ''The Thai police told us yesterday that a body had been found and that it couldn't be identified because it was badly burned. There was a card found with the body in the name of G Fletcher but the police haven't yet established whether that is related to the body.''

Mr Fletcher was born in Auchterarder and had been divorced for a number of years. A land surveyor, he moved to Qatar last July before relocating to Thailand in August.

The body of the second westerner was found on land next to the high-rise Pattaya Centre Hotel in the popular beach resort.

Police said that the injuries were consistent with the person either jumping or falling from the hotel. But hotel staff said the man was not a guest and they did not know how his body came to be in the grounds.

Last October, one Briton was shot dead and another injured in a Pattaya bar by a Thai gangster in a row over his girlfriend.