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John Unson - Philstar.com
June 19, 2026 | 6:06pm
The shabu trafficker entrapped on Thursday, June 18, 2026, inside a mall in Pagadian City, is now in the custody of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency 9, awaiting prosecution in court.
Philstar.com / John Unson
COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Anti-narcotics agents had finally arrested and seized P4 million worth of shabu from an elusive trafficker, transacting with buyers inside shopping malls, in an operation in Barangay San Pedro in Pagadian City on Thursday, June 18.
The male suspect, now in the custody of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency 9, is a known longtime shabu and marijuana dealer, who had six cohorts entrapped in separate operations in the provinces of Lanao del Sur and Maguindanao del Norte and in Cotabato City in the past 14 months by units of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region.
Bryan Babang, director of PDEA 9, said on Friday that the suspect was immediately arrested after selling to their plainclothes agents and policemen 600 grams of shabu, costing P4 million, during a tradeoff inside the Gaisano Mall in Barangay San Pedro in Pagadian City.
He said local executives in Pagadian City were instrumental in plotting the operation that led to the arrest of the suspect, premised on reports to them by tipsters about his large-scale peddling of shabu in barangays under their jurisdiction and in Lanao del Sur and Maguindanao del Norte provinces in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao and in its capital, Cotabato City.
Ranking officials of different PRO-BAR units said the suspect had thrice eluded attempts by policemen to entrap him in Maguindanao del Sur and in Cotabato City last year.
Six of his accomplices in Maguindanao del Norte and Cotabato City, two of them women, were arrested in separate police entrapment operations in the two areas in the past 14 months.
Babang said they are to prosecute the suspect that their agent arrested inside Gaisano Mall in Pagadian City for violation of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002, using the P4 million worth of shabu confiscated from him as evidence.
