OVER P13-B SHABU INTERCEPTED IN BATANGAS

admin April 16, 2024

AGENTS of the Police Regional Office 4-A on Monday intercepted some two tons of suspected shabu worth P13.3 billion at a checkpoint in Alitagtag, Batangas.

A report to Philippine National Police chief Gen. Rommel Francisco D. Marbil by Police Regional Office 4-A director Brig. Gen. Paul Kenneth T. Lucas showed that policemen manning a checkpoint in Bgy. Pinagkrusan in Alitagtag municipality stopped a Foton van which was later found to be loaded with an estimated 2,000 kilograms of shabu.

Arrested was the van driver as Michael Zarate, a 47-year-old resident of Project 4, Quezon City.

An investigation showed the suspect aroused police suspicion when he became uneasy when an officer asked him to produce his driver’s license.

Officers who observed that the back of the vehicle was covered with a blue woven sack began inspecting the van’s content and asked Zarate to remove the cover. When removed, the woven sack was found to be being used to cover the tons of shabu placed in vacuum-sealed plastics.

Marbil rushed to the site to inspect the recovered drugs, along with Lucas, and Batangas Police Provincial Office director Col. Samson B. Belmonte.

Initial reports said that members of the PRO4-A have long placed under surveillance the driver of the van believed to be a main courier of an international drug trafficking syndicate operating in the country.

A group of PRO4- undercover officers were tailing the suspect, who was later intercepted, when he tried to pass through the police anti-criminality checkpoint in Alitagtag.

Marbil and Interior and Local Government Secretary Benjamin C. Abalos Jr. congratulated the Calabarzon police force for their major drug haul, the first to be made by the police force under Marbil this year.

Abalos commended members of the Alitagtag Municipal Police Station and the Batangas police force for making the huge drug haul. He also recommended the spot promotion of the Alitagtag police chief who led the checkpoint operation.

Non-bailable charges for illegal possession of prohibited drugs under Republic Act 9165 or the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002 will be filed against the arrested suspect. .