COTABATO CITY — Police anti-smuggling operatives on Saturday foiled an attempt by an Army technical sergeant to transport P194,680 worth of Indonesian-made cigarettes from Zamboanga City to Carmen town in Cotabato.
Officials of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region (PRO-BAR) and the Maguindanao del Norte Provincial Police Office told reporters on Tuesday that the now detained 46-year-old Vergelio L. Marapao, Jr. belongs to the Army’s 1st Scout Ranger Battalion (SRB) based in Carmen, one of 17 towns in Cotabato province.
The 1st SRB is deployed in Carmen but is not an organic unit of the Army’s 601st Infantry Brigade based in the municipality, only supporting the anti-terror operations of the brigade and the 6th Infantry Division in the area.
Brig. Gen. Jaysen C. De Guzman, director of PRO-BAR, said operatives from different police units stopped Mr. Marapao’s car, just for a routine inspection at a checkpoint in Barangay Macasandag in Parang, but detained him immediately when they found out it was loaded with cigarettes from Indonesia.
Investigators from the Parang Municipal Police Station had found out that Mr. Marapao was on his way to their battalion headquarters in Carmen, from Zamboanga City, where his family reportedly resides, when he was intercepted by policemen at a stretch of the Secretary Narciso Ramos Highway in Parang, a seaside town in Maguindanao del Norte, one of the five provinces in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
The imported cigarettes that policemen found in the trunk and backseat of Mr. Marapao’s car, costing P194,680, are now in the custody of PRO-BAR, to be turned over to the Bureau of Customs for its disposition.
Mr. Marapao is now detained in a police detention facility in Parang, where Camp SK Pendatun, the command center of PRO-BAR, is located. — John Felix M. Unson