Cops neutralize shabu dealer’s henchman

COTABATO CITY --- Policemen shot dead Sunday a trusted henchman of a large-scale narcotics dealer in a brief gunfight in Pikit town in Cotabato province. 

Combined personnel of the Pikit Municipal Police Station and members of units under the Army’s 602^nd Brigade were to peacefully serve Satar Kabunto a warrant of arrest in his hideout in Barangay Gokotan, but the attempt turned haywire when he and his companions resisted, provoking a gunfight.

Lt. Col. John Miridel Calinga, Pikit municipal police chief, told reporters Monday Kabunto’s follower, Mundo Sultan Duma, was killed in the ensuing clash.

Calinga said Kabunto, most known in Pikit and nearby towns in Cotabato province by his alias, “Expander,” managed to escape as he and his cohorts traded shots with pursuing policemen and soldiers.

The joint police-Army team out to arrest Kabunto was armed with a warrant from a court for violation of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002.

Sources from the intelligence units of the Police Regional Office-12 and the Army’s 90^th and 34^th Infantry Battalions said Kabunto also has a group of cattle and motorcycle thieves operating in isolated barangays in Pikit and nearby towns.

The slain Duma was Kabunto’s liaison with buyers of shabu that he peddled in Pikit, according to the sources.