Caloocan cops retract own report on abduction

The Caloocan City police yesterday dropped its own report on the alleged abduction of a Chinese Mainland national in favor of the one prepared by the anti-illegal drugs unit of the Manila Police District (MPD) and declared the case closed.

This developed even as Caloocan police officials claimed the MPD operatives, who insisted they conducted a legitimate operation inside Caloocan territory, failed to coordinate with them.

They added that the MPD report did not hew to the truth and likewise did not fit the testimony of witnesses, from whose accounts they based their report.

Superintendent Napoleon Cuaton, deputy police chief and city police investigation chief, said in his respect to Northern Police District (NPD) director Chief Superintendent Leopoldo Bataoil on Tuesday, that a Chinese herbal medicine trader was abducted by at least four still unidentified armed men on board a tricycle and escorted by another two in motorcycles late afternoon on Monday in Caloocan City near the Caloocan-Manila boundary.

SPO1 Ferdinand Sarmiento, officer-on-case, identified the victim as Cai Xian Zhe, 36, reportedly a Chinese from the Mainland, owner of Hong Sheng Merchandise and resident of the Jade Tower Condominium on A. del Mundo street, corner 2nd Avenue in West Grace Park, Caloocan City.

The Caloocan police said the abduction took place at around 5:45 p.m. as Cai was tending to this store-cum-residence at the Tower Condominium.

Witnesses told probers, Cai was bodily dragged and carried from inside the store and was shoved inside a waiting white tricycle with unknown plates.

The tricycle, with the victim and suspects on board, sped toward busy Rizal Avenue Extension.

Another two men in separate motorcycles, apparently acting out either as lookout or back up units, were spotted by witnesses trailing the tricycle as it sped away from the crime scene.

Cuaton, however, in his report to Bataoil yesterday, said that "contrary to this report and based on a document obtained from the District Anti-Illegal Drugs Special Operations Task Group (DAID-SOTG), the case is closed as far as his office was concerned."

He said Cai was not abducted, in deference to the MPD report.

The DAID-SOTG under Superintendent Florencio Ortilla earlier claimed in a report that Cai was arrested in a buy-bust at around 7:35 p.m. of Monday, June 26 along Rizal Avenue Extension in Barrio Obrero, Tondo, Manila and reportedly seized two plastic sachets of shabu from Cai.

This was contrary to the Caloocan police’s account of the incident as reported or described by witnesses on site.

Cuaton, on Tuesday, was raring to pin down the MPD operatives for violation of standard police procedures for their second incursion into Caloocan police territory in as many days and in as many weeks.

The MPD operation was made without proper coordination with the Caloocan police, Cuaton said.

Last Saturday, members of the MPD’s Station 7, strayed into Katipunan street corner F. Roxas street, also on 2nd Avenue, Caloocan City and started firing at a group of youths, killing two of them and wounding two others.

Criminal and administrative charges have been filed by the Caloocan police against the erring police officers before the appropriate bodies even as the suspects claimed it was a legitimate operation. – With Pete Laude