P6.8 million worth of shabu seized in 2 Mindanao anti-narcotics stings

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March 24, 2026 | 6:57pm

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Agents of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency and policemen seized up to P6.8 million worth of shabu in separate operations in Maguindanao del Sur and Sulu provinces on Monday. March 23, laid with the help of Muslim clerics and local executives.

Two shabu dealers, Norton Salipada Saptulah, and his accomplice, Datz Odin Mantikayan, were immediately arrested by agents of the PDEA-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao after selling shabu to them during a tradeoff on Monday afternoon in Barangay Kauran in Ampatuan, Maguindanao del Sur.

Edgar Jubay, director of PDEA-BARMM, told reporters on Tuesday that their agents and operatives from different units of the Maguindanao del Sur Provincial Police Office and the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region had seized 500 grams of shabu, costing P3.4 million, from the duo, now both detained.

Jubay said it was vigilant Muslim religious leaders and traditional Moro datus in Ampatuan, one of the 24 towns in Maguindanao del Sur, who reported to them the shabu peddling activities of the two suspects, enabling their agents in Maguindanao del Sur to promptly plan the operation that led to their arrest and subsequent detention.

Two other shabu dealers, Jilam Hadjili Bakil and Moreno Idjas Asula, fell in a police entrapment operation on Monday night in Barangay Buansa in Indanan, Sulu, not too distant from Jolo, the capital town of the island province.

Officials of the Sulu Provincial Police Office and Brig. Gen. General Edwin Quilates, director of the Police Regional Office 9, separately told reporters on Tuesday morning that the two suspects yielded peacefully when they learned that they had sold shabu to non-uniformed policemen in Barangay Buansa.

Quilates said municipal officials and confidential informants, among them relatives of Bakil and Asula, helped PRO 9 units in Sulu and officials of the Indanan Municipal Police Station plot the entrapment operation that resulted in their arrest and confiscation from them of P3.4 million worth of shabu.

Quilates said they shall use the 500 grams of shabu confiscated from Bakil and Asula as evidence in prosecuting them for violation of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002.