5 drug dealers arrested in Region 12 in a week

KORONADAL CITY --- Five large-scale shabu dealers, three of them reportedly sharing fractions of earnings to the New People’s Army, got arrested one after another in the past seven days.

Naravy Duquiatan, director of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency for Region 12, said Wednesday suspects Jocento Aro, Cyrus Butigan, Jomar Mangakoy and Ron Carlo Dayao, are now detained, awaiting prosecution.

Aro and Butigan, whom sources from the Army’s intelligence community under the Eastern Mindanao Command said have links with the NPA, were arrested in separate PDEA-12 operations in Kidapawan City.

Combined personnel of the Kidapawan City police and PDEA-12 had seized from Butigan dried marijuana leaves, bolstering the military’s assertion that he and cohort Aro have links with the NPA.

NPA rebels are known for propagating marijuana in the upland borders of the provinces of Bukidnon and North Cotabato, whose capital is Kidapawan City, to generate income needed to sustain their needs.

PDEA-12 agents, members of units under the Police Regional Office-12 and the Army’s 90th Infantry Battalion arrested Jomar Demaagos Mangakay in Barangay Kayaga in Kabacan, North Cotabato in a subsequent operation, acting on tips from his vigilant neighbors.

The combined PDEA-Army-police team that raided his hideout recovered from him eight plastic sachets containing shabu.

Two suspected cohorts of Mangakay were seen running away from the scene carrying a black back believed to contain shabu.

Duquiatan said they have also filed a criminal case against Ron Carlo Dayao, who fell in an entrapment operation in Mlang town in North Cotabato.

Dayao was immediately clamped down after selling shabu to a non-uniformed PDEA-12 agent in a sting laid with the help of the Mlang municipal police and local officials.

The last drug dealer to fall in the past seven days through the cooperation of PDEA-12 and police personnel from PRO-12 was Jeric Bautista, entrapped in Barangay Apopong in General Santos City.

Duquiatan said Bautista was immediately frisked and cuffed after turning over shabu to a buyer, a PDEA-12 agent disguised as drug dependent, in a clandestine trade off in Sitio Malipayon in Barangay Apopong.

Sources from the Army’s 6th Infantry Division that has jurisdiction over General Santos City and the provinces of South Cotabato, Sarangani and Sultan Kudarat said like Aro and Butigan who were arrested in Kidapawan City, Bautista also has links with the NPA.

Bautista was also a known distributor of dried marijuana supplied by NPAs operating in hinterland areas in Surallah, South Cotabato and in mountain ranges in Sultan Kudarat’s Isulan, Esperanza and Lebak towns.