COTABATO CITY (Sept. 25, 2025) — Agents of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency seized P136,000 worth of shabu from a barangay councilor who fell in an entrapment operation in Barangay Ballak in Tandubas, Tawi-Tawi on Wednesday, September 24.
Municipal officials in Tandubas, an island town in Tawi-Tawi, told reporters on Friday, September 26, that the now detained 43-year-old Aldzrin Sulani Koa, a member of the barangay council in Ballak, had peddled shabu to contacts in different municipalities in the province.
Gil Cesario Castro, director of the PDEA-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, told reporters on Friday, September 26, that the suspect was immediately arrested by their agents and policemen after selling to them 20 grams of shabu, costing P136,000, during an entrapment operation at one area in Barangay Ballak.
Castro said the operation that led to the confiscation from him of P136,000 worth of shabu was supported by local executives and personnel the Tandubas Municipal Police Station and operatives from other units in Tawi-Tawi of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, under Brig. Gen. Jaysen De Guzman.
Castro had told reporters that credit for the feat has to go to the traditional Tausug and Samah community leaders in Tandubas who provided their agents in Tawi-Tawi with vital information about the barangay official’s drug trafficking activities, enabling them to immediately embark on the entrapment operation that resulted in his arrest.