Justice Secretary Leila de Lima. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
Justice Secretary Leila de Lima has asked the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to subject inmate Rolito Go, as well as the latter’s nephew and sister, to a lie detector test to verify their story that Go had been abducted and had not escaped from the national penitentiary in Muntinlupa City last week.
Go and his nephew Clemence Yu, a registered nurse, disappeared from the New Bilibid Prison (NBP) last Aug. 14, only to surface the day after, claiming they had been kidnapped by four men who took them to Batangas.
De Lima said that she had asked NBI Director Nonatus Ceasar Roxas to conduct the lie detector test on Go, his nephew and his sister after the findings of an NBI investigation matched Go’s claim that he and Yu were indeed taken from the NBP.
In a text message from Naga City where she is attending the wake for Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo, De Lima said the lie detector tests may “further confirm the plausibility and/or credibility of their story.”
De Lima also said the authorities were still verifying Go’s claim that he had paid P40,000 to his abductors.
“If true, I don’t think we can consider that as ransom because the alleged original demand was P100 million, reduced to P50 million,” the justice secretary said.
She said there was a “counteroffer” of P1 million “but (this) was not given.”
De Lima said Wednesday that there was a “semblance of truth” in Go’s claim to having been kidnapped based on evidence found by the NBI and on her own findings that there were cases of hulidap (arrest and holdup) at the NBP involving the wives of inmates.
The justice secretary said she will ask the NBI to form a special team to “dig deeper” into these hulidap incidents.—Christine O. Avendaño