Missing vice mayor in Surigao del Sur found
TIMRA Reports • 10:30 AM Tue Mar 29, 2022
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By:
John M. Unson
Photo: Vice Mayor Antonio Adlao has reunited with his relatives. (PNP photo)
COTABATO CITY --- The vice mayor of Tagbina, Surigao del Sur who was reported missing last weekend was found roaming in another town in the province by a police team before dawn Monday.
Tagbina Vice Mayor Antonio Adlao was immediately brought to the police station in Bunawan in Agusan del Sur province which is quite distant from his hometown and, there, provided with food and clothing by the team that rescued him.
His relatives and constituents reported to the police that he went missing on Saturday morning.
Adlao’s motorcycle was found along a road near his farm in Barangay Malixi in Tagbina before noontime Saturday, just few days after he reportedly declined to pay P200,000 worth of “protection money” to a local group of the New People’s Army.
Investigators in the Bunawan Municipal Police Station are still trying to extract information from Adlao on how he disappeared from Tagbina, where there is NPA presence.
A certain Ka Sandara, claiming to speak on behalf of NPA forces in Surigao del Sur, had told reporters in the province that there was no truth to allegations that they tried to extort P200,000 from Adlao.
A number of NPAs have surrendered in batches to Army and police units in the province in recent months, claiming life has been so hard out in the fields where they subsist only on meager food and money collected from villagers at gunpoint.