2 women with soap, perfume trade as smokescreen arrested with P3.7M in meth

ZAMBOANGA CITY—Police arrested a female migrant worker and a businesswoman in a drug buy-bust operation on Tuesday (July 28) here.

Capt. Yashier Sarikin, Zamboanga City police spokesperson, said the drug raid yielded 11 sachets of shabu, or crystal meth, weighing half a kilogram.

The seized meth was estimated to have a value of P3.7 million in the streets.

Sarikin identified the two women suspects as Nur-Adzelyn Ladjahali Villaraza, 22, an OFW who lives at Rio Hondo village, and Linda Tasim Kasim, 51, a businesswoman who lives at the village of Maasin.

In an interview, Villaraza said she was asking for financial help from Kasim, whom she said is her grandmother, as she needed money to pay for the hospital bills of her younger brother.

“She invited me to sell soap and perfumes,” said Villaraza. “It’s my first time,” Villaraza said.

Villaraza said she thought they were selling soap when she and Kasim were arrested on Pilar Street at Zone IV village past 2 p.m. in possession of the marked money used in the drug bust.

Kasim strongly denied owning the drugs.

“I was accompanying my niece to sell soap. I don’t know where these drugs came from,” Kasim said.

Maj. Chester Natividad, chief of the Culianan Police Station 4, said police have been surveilling Kasim in the past five days.

“She claimed she is selling soap (but) how can she explain these sachets of crystalline substance and marked money?” Natividad said.

The two women are now detained at the Culianan police station.

TSB