Region 12 cops seize P13.9-M worth of shabu in Cotabato

COTABATO CITY —Policemen seized P13.9 million worth of shabu from three peddlers from faraway areas, entrapped in nearby Pigcawayan town in Cotabato province on Tuesday morning.

Brig. Gen. Percival Augustus Placer, director of the Police Regional Office-12, told reporters at noontime Tuesday that the suspects, a 36-year-old woman named Marhaya Aziz Abdullah and her two male accomplices, Kadapi Karim Jaca, 45, and Ridzmer Nasher Abdulkara, 38, fell in a sting together laid by units of PRO-12 and personnel of the Police Drug Enforcement Group-12.

Abdullah and Jaca are both residents of Zamboanga City in Region 9 while Abdulkara is from Barangay Suba-Suba in Pandami town in Sulu in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

They were immediately detained after selling P13.9 million worth of shabu, weighing 2.1 kilos, in a tradeoff with plainclothes policemen in Room 3 of the Red High Heel Hotel in Barangay Balogo in Pigcawayan, about 40 kilometers from here and 14 hours via overland travel from Zamboanga City.

Placer said the entrapment operation that resulted in the arrest of the suspects and confiscation from them of P13.9 million worth of shabu was assisted by personnel of the Pigcawayan Municipal Police Station and the Cotabato Provincial Police Office.

Policemen had also confiscated from one of them a 9 millimeter Glock 17 pistol and impounded their white Toyota Fortuner that they used in transporting their illegal merchandise from Zamboanga City. 

Placer said  Abdullah, Jaca and Abdulkara are now locked in the detention facility of the Pigcawayan municipal police, awaiting prosecution.