Nonilo Arile, a former member of the Western Police District (WPD), was killed at the New Bilibid Prisons (NBP) on Sept. 13, or two days after his transfer to the national penitentiary.
A Quezon City regional trial court judge was set to sentence him to death for a kidnapping case where he was one of the three suspects.
A source at the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) said members of the Sigue-Sigue Sputnik gang are suspected to be behind Arile’s killing.
Arile was also facing a kidnapping case at the Quezon City regional trial court. Two of his alleged cohorts, Carlos Paran and George Beltran, were subsequently sentenced to death by Branch 76 Judge Monina Zeñarosa last Oct. 25.
His demise was not immediately known to court staff members because being an inmate at the NBP, Arile was entitled to a separate reading of the court ruling inside the national penitentiary.
It was learned that he, too, was found guilty of kidnapping for ransom a preparatory school pupil six years ago.
He had just been meted a 40-year jail term for killing a fellow inmate at the Quezon City Jail, Dante Viray. The sentence required his transfer to the national penitentiary.
A court source said Judge Zeñarosa was not immediately informed of Arile’s death.
The BJMP source said Arile, who was a Sigue-Sigue mayores at the Quezon City Jail, had gotten the ire of fellow gang members whose lives he had made difficult while they were detained at the city jail.
Viray himself was a gang member. Arile, it was learned, was consumed with suspicions that the victim had been carrying on an affair with his wife.
According to court records, he placed Viray in an isolation cell, allegedly for violating the gang’s code of honor. Viray was deprived of food and beaten to a pulp by Arile’s minions before he was stabbed to death.
But until now, the court staff has yet to receive an official confirmation of Arile’s death from the NBP, which is directly under the Department of Justice.
"There is yet no official communication from the NBP," said a court staff. "If he is really dead, then the death sentence to be handed down to him for the kidnapping case is already moot and academic."
Under the country’s criminal laws, death extinguishes criminal liability.