Package with suspected cocaine worth P7M found by fisher in Palawan

INQUIRER.net FILE PHOTO

PUERTO PRINCESA CITY — Authorities said they recovered on Tuesday a package containing P7 million worth of suspected cocaine found the day before by a fisherman in Rizal town in Palawan province.

Rizal police and Palawan Provincial Drug Enforcement Unit (PDEU) picked up the package containing suspected cocaine weighing about one kilogram at 9 a.m. in Barangay Taburi.

A police report on Wednesday said that Rizal police were conducting seaborne patrol in the waters of Barangays Latud and Taburi, when they received information from Taburi councilor Annaliza Magdayao that a fisherman had found a package.

Rizal police chief Major Thirz Starky Timbancaya said in a statement that they had also asked the fisherman if there were marks on the package that could give them a hint on its origin “because it might have been dropped somewhere else and was just brought by waves to the area.”

The package was brought to the Palawan Police Provincial Office laboratory for examination.

“Since the place is open sea, it could be used as a transient point for those involved in illegal drugs transaction,” Timbancaya said, adding that they would conduct follow-up operations along the municipal coastlines.

“It might have been dropped in the sea with a GPS (global positioning system) so it could be tracked by the person who would pick it up. It so happened that there was a storm recently, which probably took the package here. So we are going to patrol the coastline to check [if] there are still more of these [packages],” he added.

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