COTABATO CITY (April 10, 2026) — Agents of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency 12 arrested eight shabu dealers and closed down their drug dens immediately in separate operations in two Central Mindanao cities within just two days.
PDEA 12 agents arrested on Monday night, April 6, four individuals, one of them a woman, whose drug den in a residential area in Kidapawan City they raided after barangay leaders and officials of the Cotabato provincial government hinted about the pot sessions they facilitated there for buyers of their merchandise from villages around.
Charlene Magdurulang, director of PDEA 12, said on Thursday that the raid of the drug den of the suspects was assisted by local executives aware of their illegal activities in Barangay Poblacion in Kidapawan City, the capital of Cotabato province.
Magdurulang said provincial officials, among them Gov. Emmylou Taliño-Mendoza, presiding chairperson of the multi-sector Cotabato Provincial Peace and Order Council, and barangay leaders in Kidapawan City supported the operation that led to the arrest of the four drug den operators and confiscation from them of P102,000 worth of shabu.
PDEA 12’s drug den raid last Monday in Kidapawan city was preceded by the arrest the day before by its agents of four other shabu peddlers, who also owned a drug den, in an entrapment operation in Purok Riverside in Barangay EJC Montilla in Tacurong City in Sultan Kudarat province.
PDEA 12 agents immediately frisked and cuffed the suspects, two of them women, after turning over to them P122,400 worth of shabu during a tradeoff right in their drug den in Purok Riverside in Barangay EJC Montilla.
All four suspects, arrested in an operation planned with the help of local executives and tipsters aware of their ownership of a drug den in the area, are now locked in separate detention facilities, according to Magdurulang.
Magdurulang said their anti-narcotics operations in the cities of Kidapawan and Tacurong were assisted by Brig. Gen. Arnold Ardiente, director of the Police Regional Office 12.
Photo shows the shabu dealers whose drug den in Kidapawan City PDEA 12 agents raided last week. All of them are now awaiting prosecution in court. []
