4 large-scale dealers busted in separate Central Mindanao PDEA operations

COTABATO CITY — Anti-narcotics operatives arrested three drug den operators and a dealer implicated in more than a dozen criminal cases in separate operations in Cotabato City and in Surallah, South Cotabato on Monday.

Aileen Lovitos, director of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency 12, told reporters on Tuesday that John Paul Adelmita Coralde, 21, Ian Lester Franilla Plantig, 20, and the 23-year-old Jefer Intendencia Caguisano, entrapped by PDEA-12 agents on Monday night, are now under their custody.

The three suspects were immediately arrested after selling 12.3 grams of shabu, costing P83,640, to PDEA-12 agents in their drug den in Purok Rosas in the secluded Barangay Dajay in Surallah, South Cotabato.

“It was for the confidential information from barangay folks that we learned about their drug den operation in that area,” Lovitos said.

The PDEA-12 operation in Surallah that resulted in the arrest of Coralde, Plantig and Caguisano was preceded by the entrapment in Cotabato, about four hours before, by agents of the PDEA-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao of the 49-year-old shabu dealer Nidsam Arsad Sulaiman.

Officials of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region and sources in the Pagadian City Police Office in Region 9 on Tuesday confirmed that Sulaiman hails from Barangay Benuatan in Dinas in Zamboanga del Sur province, where he is wanted by different local courts for motorcycle theft, armed robbery, extortion and drug trafficking.

PDEA-BARMM director Gil Cesario Castro told reporters on Tuesday that non-uniformed PDEA-BARMM agents had confiscated from Sulaiman 50 grams of shabu that he sold to them for P340,000 in a tradeoff along Jose Lim Sr. Street in Barangay Poblacion 5 in this city.

Castro said Sulaiman is now locked in the detention facility here of PDEA-BARMM, awaiting prosecution.