Cops look at overlapping land claims in murder of farm couple

CITY OF SAN JOSE DEL MONTE—A land dispute between agrarian reform beneficiaries and private landowners may be the key to solving the Sept. 19 murder of a farming couple here, police said.

Supt. Charlie Cabradilla, city police director, said the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) had called their attention last year to cases of harassment plaguing holders of Certificates of Land Ownership Awards (Cloas) in the city.

Cabradilla’s investigation is being augmented by a task force formed by Senior Supt. Ferdinand Divina, Bulacan police director, to solve the murder of Roger Vargas and his wife, Lucila.

The couple was being driven by their son-in-law to the public market in Barangay Tungkong Mangga when they were attacked by gunmen on a motorcycle. Roger was killed instantly from bullet wounds in the head and body, while Lucila died before reaching Sapang Palay District Hospital.

Investigators are reviewing overlapping land claims in the area following reports that the Vargas couple had had arguments with the security personnel of neighboring private owners as they tended to their 2.5-hectare farm in Barangay San Isidro.

Records from the DAR office in Sta. Maria town showed that the Vargas couple’s Cloa was part of San Isidro properties of Philippine National Bank which were converted into agrarian land, said Rodel Eguia, a DAR program technologist.

Cabradilla’s report included letters sent on May 29 and 30, 2014, by Agrarian Reform Undersecretary Anthony Parungao to the city police, complaining that “tenants and farmers of [San Isidro village] are being harassed by the security guards of [a development company] in violation of their human rights.”

‘Violent confrontations’

Parungao’s letters discussed several land conflicts which “have devolved into violent confrontations between opposing claimants.”

“The land in conflict is composed of hundreds of hectares, [and] land areas being secured by security guards, have adverse claimants,” Cabradilla said in his Sept. 23 report to Divina.

One of the properties being investigated is a lot owned and secured by a major development firm. The other lot is titled to family members of former Ilocos Sur Gov. Luis “Chavit” Singson.

According to records from the San Jose del Monte assessor’s office, a 13-hectare lot that overlaps with the Vargas land is titled under the names of Regina Singson, Ronald Singson and Ronnel Singson. The Singsons bought the property in the 1990s, despite numerous claimants dating back to 1946 when it was owned by one named Casaso.

Cabradilla informed the Bulacan police about a Sept. 15 letter request from former Governor Singson to secure “geodetic engineers and workers… conducting the clearing, the study and the topographic mapping” of the Singson property.

The request was delivered four days before the Vargas murders, Cabadrilla said. He stressed though that the police had yet no evidence implicating Singson in the Vargas’ killings.

On Sept. 17, two days before the murders, two security guards hired by “still to be determined interested parties … had a heated argument with the victims,” Cabradilla said in the report. Investigators are now looking for these security personnel.

San Isidro village councilman Marte Macatangay confirmed that the Vargas couple had a fight with security men.

Lucena Vargas, 38, a daughter of the couple, said her parents had no enemies, except for security guards in the adjoining property who tried to prevent them from harvesting their crops.