Over 300 marijuana plants destroyed in South Cotabato

SOUTH COTABATO, Philippines - Lawmen uprooted 300 more marijuana shrubs in another operation Monday, the third in South Cotabato province in just six days.

Senior Inspector Harold Cornel said villagers led them to the exact location of the marijuana plants in a secluded farm in Datal Biao in Barangay Danlag, Tampakan.

Tampakan is a hinterland South Cotabato town where there are communist rebels propagating marijuana to raise money for food and other needs.

Cornel, chief of the Tampakan municipal police, said the gunmen overseeing the farm scampered away when they noticed two teams of combined policemen, local officials and soldiers approach their location from two directions.

Cornel and his men earlier uprooted 280 marijuana shrubs in a farm also in the same barangay last week.

The two operations by the Tampakan municipal police was preceded by the August 10 raid of a marijuana farm in Barangay Salacafe in Tiboli town also in South Cotabato by policemen and soldiers.   

The raid was jointly carried out by personnel of the Tiboli municipal police, soldiers from the Army’s 57th Infantry Battalion, and local officials, responding to tips by confidential informants.

The raiding team immediately set on fire the 400 marijuana shrubs they uprooted during the operation.

The raiding team arrested the caretaker of the farm, an ethnic Tiboli tribesman named Subang Suken Taman, who turned in assorted firearms and ammunition.