‘Shabu’ lab busted in Rizal

Police on Tuesday night dismantled a laboratory capable of producing up to 50 kilograms of “shabu” (methamphetamine hydrochloride) with a street value of P250 million a week in Cainta town in Rizal province but failed to arrest any suspect behind the operation of the clandestine facility.

The laboratory was set up in a two-story house being rented by two Chinese nationals in Vista Verde subdivision in Barangay San Isidro, according to the Cainta police and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) in Calabarzon (Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal, Quezon).

In a telephone interview on Wednesday, Supt. Jong Ramirez, Cainta police chief, said the house, situated between vacant lots, was under surveillance for over a month after authorities had been tipped off that illegal drugs were being made there.

Police were in the process of securing a search warrant from the court when the property owner sought their help to forcibly open the house.

“[The landlady] had grown suspicious of the movement of the Chinese nationals, who seldom came and never stayed long at home,” Ramirez said. The house was being rented for more than three years at P20,000 monthly.

The raiding team found several laboratory equipment, such as cylinders, aluminum trays, metal containers and thermometers, and chemicals, which the PDEA said were used to cook shabu. It also recovered resealable plastic bags with traces of illegal drugs.

Police withheld the names of the Chinese nationals. Investigators, however, believed the foreigners gave their landlord fictitious names.