Police tag Indian in slay of Fil-Chinese trader

Police are hot on the trail of an Indian businessman who has been tagged as the mastermind in the ambush-slay of a Filipino-Chinese trader last April 5 in Valenzuela City.

Senior Superintendent Leopoldo Ureña, Valenzuela City police chief, said his men went to a condominium in Dian Street, Makati City to look for the suspect but to no avail. Ureña said the trader, whom the police refused to identify appears to be the primary suspect in the killing of Willie Chua, 47, of Malabon City.

Chua, owner of a factory in Valenzuela City which manufactures monoblocks and plastic housewares, was killed April 5 at around 9 a.m. while on board his Nissan Sentra Exalta with license plate WMJ-972 on his way to his place, by two men armed with UZI submachine gun with silencer. Three of his staff were seriously hurt during the incident.

"Efforts made by our intelligence men showed that the suspect could have gone as far as the Visayas," Ureña said. He said they were puzzled over the mysterious disappearance of the Indian national after his men went to his house in Makati to shed light on Chua’s killing.

Statements from the victim’s families and friends indicated that Chua had a huge debt to the suspect amounting to around P8.5 million.

Ureña said his men from intelligence units have been dispatched to trace the suspect’s whereabouts after coordination was made with the Bureau of Immigration and Deportation (BID) in the Visayas.

Ureña said he assigned at least two policemen as security escorts to the victim’s younger sister, Elaine, after an unidentified caller warned her that she will be the next target of assassination.

Chua’s elder brother, William, was also gunned down by suspected hired killers sometime this year in Quezon City. The reason behind the killing was similar, Ureña said. – Jerry Botial and Pete Laude