CURIOUSER and curiouser.
Just when people have dismissed as extortion schemes the recent incidents that had airport personnel finding bullets in the luggage of departing passengers, four new instances of the so-called “tanim-bala” or “laglag-bala” (bullet-planting) scam surfaced on Tuesday.
However, three of the passengers—all women—admitted to the misdeed. But the daughter of 77-year-old Santiago Peñaflorida, a Fil-Am bound for Los Angeles, claimed that the ammunition found in her father’s bag had been planted.
If his luggage had indeed contained the bullet, how could it have been cleared at the Iloilo airport where they had just flown in, she asked.
Peñaflorida was stopped around 6 p.m. at the initial security screening of Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Naia) Terminal 2 after personnel of the Department of Transportation and Communications-Office for Transportation Security (DOTC-OTS) saw on the X-ray monitor what looked like a bullet inside his locked backpack.
.32-cal. bullet
His daughter, who was with him, went into hysterics and accused the DOTC-OTS personnel of planting the bullet in the bag. Father and daughter refused to open and have the backpack examined until after members of the media arrived.
When the bag was finally opened, it yielded a .32-cal. bullet. Peñaflorida was invited for questioning at the Aviation Security Group-NCR headquarters.
Earlier, around 9 in the morning, the Avsegroup also investigated Marilou Rose Espinola, 27, a Bacolod-bound passenger at Naia Terminal 3, when a bullet of still undetermined caliber was found in her carry-on bag when it passed through the X-ray scanner at the departure area’s Gate 2.
Espinola admitted finding the bullet and placing it inside her bag, saying she did not know it was prohibited at the airport.
In the afternoon, Rowena Otic, 33, of Nueva Ecija province, who was sending off her Dubai-bound sibling, was intercepted at Terminal 3 for carrying two .38-cal. bullets in a red pouch.
Otic told reporters she always carried the bullets as they were her protection against hexes and similar dangers, but she forgot to take them out of her handbag. “I also thought only passengers’ bags were inspected,” she said. The bullets, she added, were given to her by a healer.
‘Charms’
Two hours later, Milagrosa Cadiente, 48, was stopped at the same Gate 6 of Terminal 3 for having a 9 mm-cal. bullet in her wallet. She just forgot to take it out of her bag, claimed Cadiente. She was fetching her employer, who had come from Japan, she added.
Cadiente also called on lawmakers to amend the Comprehensive Firearms and Ammunition Regulation Act.
“It is just stupid to put people in jail for one or two bullets. They have to understand that Filipinos carry them as charms,” she said.
The four were taken into police custody on Tuesday and will be charged with illegal possession of ammunition in the Pasay City Prosecutor’s Office.