P30-M worth of illegal drugs burned in Sultan Kudarat symbolic rite

COTABATO CITY — Officials on Monday burned P30.2 million worth of narcotics the courts had used as evidence in the prosecution of traffickers entrapped in separate operations in recent years. 

Regional Director Christian Frivaldo of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao and officials of other law enforcement agencies together led the symbolic destruction of the illegal substances in an incinerator of a private thermal power plant power plant using bio-degradable agricultural wastes as fuel of the Lamsan Cornstarch Factory in nearby Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao del Norte.

Lawyers from the Public Attorney’s Office and state prosecutors assigned in different areas in BARMM, officials of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region and intelligence units of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division participated in the activity.

The narcotics that they destroyed in the presence of reporters were comprised of P24.3 million worth of shabu, dried marijuana with a street sale value of P813,740, cocaine weighing 974 grams costing P5 million and three boxes of expired medical grade barbiturates and tranquilizers voluntarily turned in by legitimate drug stores here.

“All of the shabu, cocaine and marijuana that we burned in that incinerator were seized in operations supported by the National Bureau of Investigation, units of PRO-BAR, the Army’s 6th ID and Army brigades and battalions in BARMM and the Philippine Coast Guard,” Frivaldo said.

He said that credit for their successful entrapment of drug traffickers that got convicted in different courts in the past four years has to go partly to barangay chairpersons and Muslim religious who helped the PDEA-BARMM plot the operations that led to arrests of traffickers.