P4.4 million worth of shabu seized in Mindanao operations

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October 19, 2026 | 6:01pm

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Anti-narcotics agents seized P4.4 million worth of shabu in separate operations in two Mindanao regions on Friday, October 16, made peculiar with the support to both by relatives of the target traffickers whom they want jailed for their criminal offenses.

Charlene Magdurulang, director of the Philippine Drug Enforcement 12, confirmed on Monday the arrest of four male shabu dealers by their agents and police operatives in an entrapment operation on Friday in Barangay Rizal Poblacion in Banga, South Cotabato.

The four suspects were immediately detained by combined PDEA 12 agents and policemen from different units of the Police Regional Office 12 after selling them shabu during a trade-off at one spot in Barangay Rizal Poblacion in Banga.

The operation, which led to the arrest of the four suspects and the confiscation from them of P1 million worth of shabu, was premised on reports by local executives and their friends and close relatives about their shabu trafficking activities in Banga and in nearby towns and was laid with the help of South Cotabato Gov. Reynaldo Tamayo, Jr., who is presiding chairperson of the multi-sector Regional Peace and Order Council 12.

Magdurulang said they are grateful to the tipsters, the officials of PRO 12 and the South Cotabato Provincial Police Office and personnel of intelligence units of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division for supporting the operation that resulted in the detention of the four suspects, to be prosecuted for violation of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002.

Agents of the PDEA-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao had also confiscated late Friday half a kilo of shabu from two dealers they were to entrap, but they managed to escape using a speedboat when they sensed that they had sold their illegal merchandise to non-uniformed PDEA-BARMM agents and policemen in a seaside area in Barangay Poblacion Market in the island town of Bongao in Tawi-Tawi.

George Paul Alcovindas, regional director of PDEA-BARMM, said their Tawi-Tawi provincial team, led by Abraham Kalim, and policemen from units in the province of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, were about to frisk and cuff the two suspects but they pulled out guns, provoking a gunfight that gave them leeway to scamper away.

The two male suspects ran away towards their small watercraft with an outboard engine, berthed at a beachfront area in Barangay Poblacion Market in Bongao, enabling them to escape, leaving behind the 500 grams of shabu, costing P3.4 million, that they had sold to PDEA-BARMM agents and policemen disguised as drug dependents.

Radio reports on Monday stated that relatives of the two suspects, who helped Kalim and his companions plot their supposed entrapment, and provincial officials, among them Gov. Ysmael Sali, had separately assured to help build corresponding criminal cases against both of them in absentia.