Sex gang on the loose?

After a brief lull, a kidnap for sex gang preying on high school students is back and could be behind the botched abduction of a daughter of a police colonel in Mandaluyong City last Jan. 5, police said yesterday.

The Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) who are conducting a separate probe on the kidnap try on Marie Hilario are zeroing in on the gang who rape their victims but allow them to go home afterwards.

The gang’s activities were exposed two years ago by Director Edgar Aglipay, head of the National Capital Regional Police Office (NCRPO), himself. The gang then went underground and could have recently resumed their operations.

However, Hilario, the daughter of former Catanduanes police provincial director Senior Superintendent Almario Hilario, escaped from the gang when a number of people emerging from the elevator on the 6th floor parking area of the Shangri-La Plaza, panicked the suspects.

The victim had just parked her car when two armed men grabbed her from behind and pushed her into a waiting Toyota RAV4 when saved by the timely opening of the elevator door.

Police said Hilario was a student of La Salle Greenhills but school director Pearl Ortega clarified that no such name appeared in the roll of their Adult Night High School, the only department that accepts girls. "Our students in Grade School and High School are all boys," Ortega clarified.

Meanwhile, Superintendent Sukarno Ikbala, Mandaluyong City police chief, denied the kidnap try on Hilario. He said the case of Hilario was a "lover’s spat."

Ikbala, however, refused to elaborate.

What they are investigating, according to Ikbala is the recovery of the RAV4 which was grabbed by four-armed men from its owner, Sheila Lim, in a parking lot in Makati City.

Police recovered a 9mm automatic pistol, three license plates and a number of important documents from the vehicle, which witnesses said was used in Hilario’s kidnap try.

Ikbala admitted they are having a hard time identifying the four suspects who grabbed Lim’s vehicle as she refused to cooperate in the investigation of the case.