Carcar rape-slay: CHR says witness should be a suspect

After conducting its own investigation into the alleged illegal arrest and detention of the two suspects of a rape-slay incident in Carcar town, the Commission on Human Rights has submitted its own investigation report implicating the eyewitness as one of the suspects.

Regional Human Rights director Alejandro Alonso Jr., in that investigation report submitted to provincial prosecutor Jane Petralba, said the Office of the Provincial Prosecutor has to include Ronnie Tabura as one of those accused.

This was after Tabura, in an eight-page statement dated October 28, duly assisted by legal counsel Francisco Amit Jr., voluntarily confessed before CHR investigators his participation in the crime.

"Dili man unta ko mo-apil pero ila man gyod ko gipugos (I did not intend to join but they forced me to)," Tabura reportedly said, referring to Maximo and Concordio Luputan who told him to take part in raping 13-year-old Maylen Luputan after they were done.

Days after the incident Tabura came out to accuse Maximo, the girl's father, and Maximo's brother Concordio, as the ones who raped then murdered Mylen last September 6 in sitio Kamang-kamang, barangay Ocaña, Carcar town, Cebu.

He said that he only brought the lamp to light the cornfield the night the crime was committed.

In his affidavit, Tabura said Concordio scraped some flesh from the victim's arm and breast and cooked it with cabbage. But he said he never ate it.

The case is still being reinvestigated after the approval of the motion for reinvestigation filed by assistant public attorney Elisa Porio, who represented the two accused.

In that motion, Porio said the two were arrested without a warrant and were not afforded the benefit of a preliminary investigation when the information on rape with homicide was filed in court by the office of the provincial prosecutor. - Liv G. Campo