3 PDEA agents charged with kidnap of woman, robbery
MANILA, Philippines — Three agents of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency will remain behind bars after they were formally charged with allegedly holding a woman against her will and robbing her of P65,000 worth of valuables.
Intelligence officers Rufino Lumase Jr., 39, and Florian Rose Cada, 23, and administrative employee Danilo Superable Jr., along with their informant Jake Richard Consorte, 33, are now facing a serious illegal detention case before a Quezon City court. The charge is a non-bailable offense, unless the defense can successfully argue that the evidence so far presented by the prosecution is weak.
Documents furnished to the Quezon City Police District showed that Cada and Lumase were separately charged with robbery, while Consorte has been tagged in a case for illegal possession of firearms.
All four were also charged with attempted robbery for asking for P250,000 in exchange for the liberty of their victim, a woman whose partner was supposedly a drug pusher.
The four suspects remained detained at the QCPD Criminal Investigation and Detection Unit, as of Thursday (June 26).
Assistant city prosecutor Manuel Luis Felipe filed a motion to consolidate the four cases before Regional Trial Court Branch 84 Judge Luisito Cortez.
A bail of P100,000 was recommended for the robbery charge for Cada and Lumase while P120,000 was recommended for the illegal possession of firearms charge against Consorte.
A P2,000 bail was set for each of the accused for the attempted robbery charge.
In a nine-page resolution, Felipe found probable to indict the four accused, who were arrested on June 2 after allegedly abducting Lily Mae Lozada, the live-in partner of a supposed drug pusher, Del Dimaano.
Lozada was taken from her home in Unang Sigaw village that Monday afternoon when the agents came looking for her partner.
Seeing that their target was not around, the suspect allegedly carted away her gadgets, watches, jewelry and P14,000 cash, amounting to P65,000.
She was only freed 10 hours later when her relatives and policemen spotted the Isuzu Crosswind that the suspects were driving along Mindanao Avenue.
In his resolution, Felipe said the suspects could not invoke the presumption of regularity because of procedural lapses, such as the failure to mark the evidence immediately after Lozada’s supposed arrest, and the 10 hours it took to undertake the supposed “follow up operation.”
The fiscal added that some of Lozada’s belongings, which were taken from her, were eventually found in Cada’s possession.
In their defense, the suspects claimed that they were conducting a legitimate buy bust operation at Lozada’s house with her partner as the target.
But the prosecutor said: “This office does not believe that the respondents were engaged in a legitimate buy bust when they abducted the complainant… By doing so, the respondents were no longer in furtherance of their official functions.”
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