La Paz drug suspect: ‘Cops planted shabu’

“Whatever item the police said they seized from me came from them,” says drug selling and possession suspect Damian Cataluna of Barangay San Nicolas, La Paz, Iloilo City. IAN PAUL CORDERO/PN

ILOILO City – Damian Cataluna insisted that the suspected shabu the police seized from him were “planted.”

The 43-year-old resident of Barangay San Nicolas, La Paz district was arrested for alleged drug selling and possession.

Cataluna sold to a poseur buyer a sachet of suspected shabu for P600 at around 6:50 p.m. Wednesday in their village, police said.

Six more sachets of the same substance were found in a coin purse in the right pocket of his short pants, police added.

But Cataluna had a different version of events. “I was standing outside the barangay hall when the police grabbed and hauled me inside the building,” he told Panay News in Hiligaynon.

When the officers approached, Cataluna said, he removed his clothes “to prove that I had nothing to hide.”

“Whatever item the police said they seized from me came from them,” insisted the villager, now detained at the La Paz police station.

Cataluna claimed that the police brought him to their station but he thought it was just “an invitation…for verification.”

But at the station – to his surprise – “the police laid out the sachets [of suspected shabu] they said they got from me,” he said.

Cataluna admitted that he was arrested for a drug-related charge in 2013 and got detained until his release just this February, but said he has not used illegal drugs since.

Chief Inspector Ariel Pico, La Paz police head, said they had “raw information” that the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency arrested Cataluna in 2013.

“We don’t know what happened to his case but we learned that he was released last year and returned to the drug trade, according to information from a barangay official,” Pico told Panay News.

Pico denied that the arresting officers placed the suspected prohibited drug on Cataluna and said that claim is nothing new. “None of the many we arrested for drug selling admitted to committing the crime.”

Citing their three-week surveillance on the suspect, Pico said they learned that Cataluna had “runners,” or couriers, “but he himself transacted with the poseur buyer at the time of the buy-bust (on Wednesday).”

Cataluna faces charges for drug selling and possession, violations of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002./PN

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