Village councilor nabbed in Iloilo buy-bust

ILOILO CITY – A village official, who was in the narco list of President Duterte, has been arrested in a drug bust operation on Sunday morning.

Gemma Calzado, 53, and barangay councilor of Kasing-Kasing in Molo District here, was detained at the police precinct 4 pending filing of charges.

But Calzado, who was barangay captain for three terms before she was elected councilor, denied that she was peddling drugs, saying the allegations were politically motivated.

“I hope the Lord will touch the heart of those people who implicated me to the President. I am appealing to the President to investigate how my name was implicated to illegal drugs,” she added.

Police said Calzado was arrested after she was about to hand a sachet of shabu worth P1,200 to an undercover policeman about 9 a.m. on Sunday.

When agents of the Regional Drug Enforcement Unit (RDEU) searched her, they found eight sachets of shabu and P1,400.

Senior Insp. Kenneth Bermejo, head of the RDEU, said Calzado was linked to the group of slain drug lord Melvin Odicta Sr.

Odicta, then the biggest drug lord in Western Visayas, was killed together with his wife Meriam in August 2016 at the Caticlan Jetty Port in Malay, Aklan.

“The operatives are still verifying from whom and where she’s getting her supply,” a statement by PNP here.