Cops seize P2.7-M worth shabu from 2 peddlers in South Cotabato

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Policemen seized P2.7 million worth of shabu from two peddlers entrapped in Purok Pagkakaisa ng Barangay San Felipe in Tantangan, South Cotabato on Friday, November 5.

The suspects, Regie Sobusa Somogod, 32, and his 42-year-old accomplice, Paul Robert Panes Bechayda, are now both locked in a detention facility in the Tantangan Municipal Police Station.

Brig. Gen. Arnold Ardiente, director of the Police Regional Office-12, told reporters on Saturday that the duo was immediately frisked and cuffed by personnel of the Tantangan municipal police after confiscating from them 400 grams of shabu, costing P2.7 million, during an entrapment operation in Purok Pagkakaisa in Barangay San Felipe.

Ardiente and the deputy chief of the Tantangan police, Captain Archie Dagohoy, who led the entrapment operation, separately said that the shabu tradeoff that resulted in the arrest of the two suspects was laid with the help of local executives and South Cotabato’s governor, Reynaldo Tamayo Jr.

Tamayo, now in his third and last term as governor, is chairman of the multi-sector South Cotabato Provincial Peace and Order Council.

Local executives in Tantangan and nearby towns in South Cotabato told reporters that Somogod and Bechayda are long known for their large-scale trafficking of shabu and marijuana in the province.