Village exec, resident nabbed for gun ban violation in Masbate town

LEGAZPI CITY – Two men, including a village official, were arrested by policemen in in separate raids in Balud town in Masbate province on Thursday for violation of the election gun ban, reports reaching the Bicol regional police headquarters here showed.

Chief Insp. Arthur Gomez, spokesperson of the police’s Regional Special Operation Task Group (RSOTG)   Masbate, said a police team, armed with a search warrant, went to the house of Romy Quesio in Barangay Danao at 6:40 a.m. and recovered an unlicensed .38 cal. pistol.

The team went next to the house of Welson Obligar, a village councilman in Danao, and confiscated a .45 cal. pistol and two shotguns.

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Gomez said the arrest of Quesio and Obligar and the seizure of loose firearms were results of surveillance operations conducted by the task group.

The police in Bicol have seized 27 unlicensed firearms in checkpoints across the region since the gun ban was imposed in January.

Masbate had been tagged as an election hot spot in previous elections because of intense rivalries among political clans here and cases of election-related violence. CDG

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