BARMM cops seize 6.8-M worth shabu from couple

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Plainclothes policemen confiscated P6.8 million worth of shabu from a couple who fell in an entrapment operation in Datu Odin Sinsuat on Saturday, November 9.

Brig. Gen. Romeo Macapaz, director of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, told reporters on Sunday that Oks Ayunan Odin and his wife, Bellia Antilino Odin, are now detained, awaiting prosecution for violation of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002.

Macapaz said the couple was immediately arrested after selling to personnel of the Sultan Kudarat Municipal Police Station, led by Lt. Col. Esmael Madin, a kilo of shabu, costing P6.8 million, in a tradeoff on Saturday afternoon in the town proper of Datu Odin Sinsuat, Maguindanao del Norte.

The entrapment operation was first laid by Madin and his subordinates in Barangay Salimbao in Sultan Kudarat, but the Odins asked their contacts in the Sultan Kudarat Municipal Police Station, disguised as drug dependents, that the sale of shabu be done in nearby Datu Odin Sinsuat instead.

Madin told reporters their counterparts in the Datu Odin Sinsuat Municipal Police Station, under Lt. Col. Lt. Col. Samuel Roy Subsuban, assisted them in carrying out the operation that resulted in the arrest of the Odins and the seizure from them of P6.8 million worth of shabu.

Macapaz said the operation was based on reports by vigilant residents in Sultan Kudarat and in Datu Odin Sinsuat about the large-scale drug trafficking activities of the Odins, now both locked in a police detention facility.