P6.8 Million Worth of Shabu Seized from Three Drug Dealers in Cotabato City

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Anti-narcotics agents seized a kilo of shabu, costing P6.8 million, from three dealers entrapped with the help of their own relatives and local executives in a residential area in this city on Thursday, August 6. City and barangay officials separately told reporters on Friday that they would help the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao prosecute the now-detained Jayson Kamsali Karon and his two female accomplices, Meriam Bagundang Rauf and Sambra Mama Gulo, using the P6.8 million worth of shabu confiscated from them as evidence. Edgar Jubay, director of PDEA-BARMM, said on Friday that the suspects were immediately arrested by PDEA-BARMM agents, backed by operatives from different units of the Cotabato City Police Office led by their director, Col. Jibin Bongcayao, after selling them shabu at one spot in Barangay Rosary Heights 3. Jubay said the entrapment operation that led to the arrest of the three suspects and confiscation from them of P6.8 million worth of shabu was laid with the help of barangay officials in Rosary Heights 3 and the office of Mayor Bruce Matabalao, who is presiding chairperson of the multi-sector Cotabato City Peace and Order Council. It was the relatives of Karon, Rauf and Gulo who first reported to Jubay and Matabalao their shabu and marijuana peddling activities in Cotabato City, enabling agents of PDEA-BARMM and policemen to promptly embark on the entrapment operation that resulted in their arrest. Jubay said all of the three suspects are now locked in PDEA-BARMM’s detention facility, awaiting prosecution for violation of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002. PDEA-BARMM agents and policemen had also impounded during the entrapment operation the black minivan of the suspects, with license plates MBK 2638, that they used in delivering shabu and marijuana to contacts in Cotabato City and in nearby areas in Sultan Kudarat and Datu Odin Sinsuat towns in Maguindanao del Norte.