P13.6-M worth of shabu seized in Sulu

COTABATO CITY — Law enforcement operatives and Army personnel seized P13.6 million worth of shabu from a large-scale trafficker entrapped in Indanan town, Sulu on Saturday.  

The sting that led to the arrest of Sakura Badih Astung was laid by agents in Sulu of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao with the help of units of the Sulu Provincial Police Office and the military’s Western Mindanao Command.

Gil Cesario Castro, director of PDEA-BARMM, on Sunday said that their operation in Barangay Tagbak in Indanan at about noontime Saturday also led to the confiscation  of Astung's mobile phone containing numbers of his contacts in the province and a motorcycle that he used in delivering his illegal merchandise around the municipality and in Jolo, the capital town of Sulu.

A companion of Astung, who was supposed to be entrapped too, managed to escape and hurt a soldier under the Army’s 100th Infantry Battalion whom he shot with a pistol. The companion ran away when he sensed that they have sold two kilos of shabu, costing P13.6 million, to non-uniformed PDEA-BARMM agents and policemen.

The wounded soldier was rushed to a hospital for treatment.