Eight drug suspects rounded up in Mandaluyong

Police rounded up Tuesday night a suspected drug pusher and seven others during an intensified anti-drug operations in Mandaluyong City.

The suspects, Rodolfo Abalos, Corazon Castillo, Romeo Salinga, Rolando Baroa, Pedrito Corbantos, Bong Maalay, Raymundo Baroa and Wendel Suqui, were presented to the media yesterday by Chief Superintendent Oscar Valenzuela, director of the Eastern Police District (EPD).

"The suspects’ arrest shows that we are gaining ground in our campaign against illegal drugs," said Valenzuela, as he vowed to clear more barangays in eastern Metro Manila of illegal drugs in 100 days.

In his report to Valenzuela, Superintendent Ericson Velasquez, Mandaluyong City police chief, said the first to fall was Castillo, the group’s runner based in Barangay Hagdang Bato.

Castillo led Velasquez and his men to a house at 576 Gonzaga Street in Barangay Hagdang Bato where the Baroas, Salinga, Corbantos, Maalay and Sugi were caught in the act of sniffing shabu. Confiscated from them were four sachets of shabu and drug sniffing paraphernalia.

During tactical interrogation, Castillo admitted being the group’s runner. He also led the police to the house of Abalos in Welfareville Compound in Barangay Addition Hills. Abalos yielded three plastic sachets of shabu.

Abalos said he is not in any way related to Mandaluyong City Mayor Benjamin "Benhur" Abalos Jr. and was only forced to sell illegal drugs to sustain the daily needs of his family. He also revealed that he gets his shabu from a big-time pusher based in Culiat, Quezon City.

Meanwhile, a rookie policeman in Pasay City was apprehended by 15 armed operatives of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) early yesterday morning on suspicion that he was involved in the illegal drug trade.

Superintendent Jessie Jerry Taduran, Pasay City deputy chief of police for operations, identified the suspect as PO1 Raymond Sannadan.

However, Taduran has doubts on the legality of the arrest and said they are still waiting for the PDEA’s full report.

Richard Manundan, an official of Barangay 201-Zone 20, told case officer PO3 Fernando Escol that he accompanied Sannadan to buy a pack of cigarettes in Barangay Balabag, Merville, Pasay City when 15 armed men swooped down on them and disarmed Sannandan of his service firearms forced him to board a Nissan car.

The apprehending officers, meanwhile, boarded a Mitsubishi Lancer and two motorcycles, without license plates, and sped off toward the South Luzon Expressway. — With Evelyn Macairan