Mindanao’s ‘drug queen’ nabbed in Iligan

Lovely Adam Impal: One of Kerwin Espinosa’s alleged top drug suppliers. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY—“They just barged into my place and arrested me and my companions,” suspected Mindanao drug queen Lovely Impal Adam said a few hours after her arrest by antidrug agents in nearby Iligan City on Wednesday.

Speaking to reporters here, where she was brought after she and two others were arrested in what authorities said was a drug buy-bust operation, Impal, 39, said: “I do not sell drugs anymore.”

Impal, who reportedly supplied  drug lords like Kerwin Espinosa, was arrested along with her  sister, Farina Rato, and another companion identified as Alvin Pamilian, by agents of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) in Barangay Pala-o in Iligan City.

Adrian Alvariño, the chief of the PDEA in Northern Mindanao, said the arrests were made after Impal handed a sachet of “shabu”  (methamphetamine hydrochloride) to a PDEA agent, who posed as a buyer, in her house in Pala-o.

Also seized from her were additional sachets of shabu, weighing 110 grams and with an estimated street value of P550,000, according to Alvariño.