P6.8-M worth shabu seized from runaway dealers
COTABATO CITY --- State agents seized P6.8 million worth of shabu from two runaway traffickers in a bungled entrapment operation in Maimbung town in Sulu province Saturday.
Juvenal Azurin, director of the Philipine Drug-Enforcement Agency-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, identified the elusive drug dealers as Bashir Jam and Basaron Rajikat, now subject of a joint police-military manhunt.
They were to sell a kilo of shabu, valued at P6.8 million, to non-uniformed PDEA-BARMM agents in a supposed tradeoff in a coastal village in Maimbung but immediately escaped when they sensed that they were dealing with government anti-narcotics operatives.
“They fled using a motorized watercraft. They left their illegal merchandise behind,” Azurin said Sunday.
Azurin said they will prosecute both suspects in absentia using the shabu recovered from them as evidence.
Police Brig. Gen. Eden Ugale, director of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, said Sunday he has ordered the Sulu provincial police to help the PDEA build an airtight criminal case against Jam and Rajikat.
Ugale said police intelligence agents in Sulu are now trying to locate the suspects.