Couple operating drug den nabbed in Cotabato

COTABATO CITY, Philippines - Anti-narcotics agents on Tuesday arrested a couple operating here a drug den, which minors in the neighborhood patronized.

Spouses Rogelio Bolo and Leilah Legita-Bolo were caught in the act of selling methamphetamine hydrochloride (shabu) to an agent of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency-Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (PDEA-ARMM) in a dragnet staged at past 6:00 p.m. Tuesday.

Bolo was a corporal in the Headquarters Service Battalion of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division who was dishonorably discharged for absence without leave and addiction to shabu.

The PDEA-ARMM’s sting that led to the arrest of Bolo and his wife was staged after two weeks of surveillance on their drug trafficking activity and operation of a drug den in Barangay Rosary Heights 6, a residential area in southwest of Cotabato City.

Neighbors of the arrested couple had confirmed that their drug den was patronized by minors, mostly students from nearby schools.

“They arrive there on motorcycles, stay in the couple’s house and leave after a brief stay there,” said a neighbor who works in a government agency under Administrative Region 12.

Also arrested along with Bolo and his wife is their 15-year-old son, who is to be turned over by PDEA-ARMM to an office of the Department of Social Welfare and Development in Cotabato City.

Bolo’s father in-law, Jaime Legita, was a policeman under the Cotabato City police office but got booted in the early 1980s for possession of dried marijuana leaves which he was to clandestinely sell to local contacts.

Legita served a jail term for the offense and was again arrested about four years ago for peddling of shabu, for which he is still being prosecuted in a local court.

The director of PDEA-ARMM, Bryan Babang, said he is thankful to “patriotic” city residents who helped them neutralized Bolo and his wife.

Babang said he is also grateful to the city mayor of Cotabato City, Cynthia Guiani-Sayadi, for supporting extensively their anti-narcotics operations in all of the 37 barangays under her jurisdiction.

The Cotabato City local government unit, the local police and the PDEA-ARMM had arrested no fewer than a hundred drug peddlers in joint operations in the past seven months.