Judge drops case vs shabu lab ‘caretaker’

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has lost its case against the supposed Filipino caretaker of a shabu factory in Antipolo City which yielded 466 kilograms of shabu worth almost P2 billion during a raid last year.

This, as Antipolo City Regional Trial Court Judge Mauricio Rivera dropped the charges against Eusebio Arellano Jr., alias Yang Jianzhiu.

The court granted Arellano’s appeal and set aside its earlier order denying his motion to quash the charges against him. He was ordered released from the Rizal provincial jail.

In a seven-page decision, Rivera of Antipolo RTC Branch 73 ruled that the warrantless arrest of Arellano was illegal and that no drugs or other related paraphernalia were confiscated from him or his vehicle.

It was not immediately known from the DOJ how the court’s action on Arellano’s case would affect the charges against the four Chinese nationals — Yan Huan Lai, Chin Tu Chen, Chuang Wen Ming and Ho Kisu Hsing — who were tagged as the operators of the shabu laboratory raided in Barangay Mambugan, Antipolo City.

In his ruling, Rivera said the circumstances surrounding Arellano’s apprehension did not conform with the requirements of warrantless arrest.

While members of the police raiding team saw Arellano allegedly blowing his horns and trying to enter the warehouse at the time of the raid, Rivera said he was not originally among those suspected of keeping dangerous drugs in the premises.

Rivera noted that Arellano "was not arrested after committing or while commiting an offense."

Arellano, the judge added, was not arrested in Barangay Mambugan, but at the Town and Country Executive Village "as borne out by the witnesses of the accused, including the admission of the police operatives during cross examination."

Rivera also said that while Arellano drove away upon seeing the policemen, he did not do it fast enough as if evading arrest.

"Ordinary human experience dictates that a person eluding capture would proceed with all dispatch to prevent his captors from closing in," he said.