Drug den shut down, shabu dealer nabbed in 2 Mindanao PDEA operations

COTABATO CITY — Anti-narcotics agents closed down a drug den in Pagadian City and entrapped a long-wanted shabu peddler in Datu Piang, Maguindanao del Sur in separate operations in two days.

Maharani Gadaoni-Tosoc, director of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency-9, told reporters on Thursday that their agents arrested five individuals, four of them minors, inside a drug den in Purok Upper Lumboy in Barangay Tuburan in Pagadian City in Zamboanga del Sur province that they raided on Monday.

Gadaoni-Tosoc said the 42-year-old drug den operator Flor Ponce Espinosa and his four accomplices, all high school students, are now under their custody. The two would be prosecuted for violation of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002.

She, however, emphasized that authorities would seek the help of the Pagadian City Social Welfare Office in overseeing the detention of the four young accomplices of Espinosa, from whose drug den PDEA-9 agents found 25 sachets of shabu and drug sniffing paraphernalia.

The operation that led to the arrest of Espinosa and the four minors was premised on tips by confidential informants, among them barangay officials aware of their illegal activities.

It preceded Wednesday’s entrapment in Barangay Kanguan in Datu Piang, Maguindanao Del Sur by agents of the PDEA-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao of a shabu peddler who operated near school campuses and in public markets in different towns in the province.

Gil Cesario Castro, director of PDEA-BARMM, said on Thursday that the suspect, Jomarie Kabucan Sakilan, 27, is now detained in their office at the PC Hill Complex in Cotabato City.

Sakilan, who hails from Barangay Matilak in Kabuntalan town in Maguindanao del Norte, was immediately frisked and cuffed by non-uniformed PDEA-BARMM agents and operatives from different units of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region after selling to them P340,000 worth of shabu in an entrapment operation in Barangay Kanguan.

Castro said that the entrapment of Sakilan was planned with the help of vigilant villagers, among them his relatives by blood, and the Datu Piang local government unit.

Local officials, among them senior members of different municipal peace and order councils in Maguindanao del Sur, have confirmed to reporters that Sakilan and his accomplices sold shabu near school campuses and have contacts in public markets and terminals of passenger vehicles too.