P3.4-M worth shabu seized in another PDEA sting in Cotabato City

COTABATO CITY — Plainclothes anti-narcotics agents seized P3.4 million worth of shabu from a dealer arrested in an entrapment operation along a busy thoroughfare in Cotabato City on Monday night.

The 25-year-old Norhan Abdullah Padao did not resist arrest when combined personnel of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao and the Cotabato City Police Office cuffed him after selling to them 500 grams of shabu, costing P3.4 million, during the tradeoff late Monday at one side of the Sinsuat Avenue in Barangay Poblacion 5 in Cotabato City.

Gil Cesario Castro, director of PDEA-BARMM, said on Tuesday that the operation that led to the detention of Padao, who hails from Barangay Kalawag 2 in Isulan town in Sultan Kudarat, was planned after informants tipped them about his drug peddling activities.

Padao’s arrest was preceded by the seizure of P3.4 million worth of shabu from Kuyat Sansaluna Sangkala and King Fahad Mantuwang Ganoy in an entrapment operation by PDEA-BARMM agents and policemen in a stretch of the Sinsuat Avenue in the uptown Barangay Rosary Heights 10 in Cotabato City on Wednesday last week.

Sangkala and Ganoy, now locked in a detention facility of the PDEA-BARMM at the PC Hill area in Cotabato City, had been charged with violation of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002 using the P3.4 million shabu confiscated from them as evidence.