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P32-M marijuana plants seized in Lanao Sur

By Edwin Fernandez

September 13, 2022, 11:45 am

<p><strong>DESTROYED.</strong> A police officer pours gasoline on a pile of marijuana plants seized in the upland town of Maguing in Lanao del Sur on Monday (Sept. 12, 2022). Police operatives burned more than 150,000 marijuana plants after swooping down on two marijuana plantations in the town at past 10 a.m. <em>(Photo courtesy of Lanao Sur Police Provincial Office)</em></p>

DESTROYED. A police officer pours gasoline on a pile of marijuana plants seized in the upland town of Maguing in Lanao del Sur on Monday (Sept. 12, 2022). Police operatives burned more than 150,000 marijuana plants after swooping down on two marijuana plantations in the town at past 10 a.m. (Photo courtesy of Lanao Sur Police Provincial Office)

COTABATO CITY – About PHP32 million worth of marijuana plants were uprooted in Maguing, Lanao del Sur, police reported Tuesday.

Col. Jibin Bongcayao, Lanao del Sur police director, said the operation was launched Monday together with the Police Drug Enforcement Unit - Special Operations Group 15 on upland marijuana farms in barangays Dilimbayan and Pindulonan in Maguing.

In a statement, Bongcayao said police operatives burned more than 150,000 marijuana plants while some were taken down by police for presentation to local courts in prosecuting the suspected cultivators.

Backed by troopers of the Army’s 101st Infantry Brigade, authorities swooped down on the plantation but gunmen guarding it escaped before government forces reached the sites, he said.

Brig. Gen. John Guyguyon, police regional director for the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), urged police units across the region to further intensify the campaign against illegal drugs.

Guyguyon said the marijuana cultivators in Lanao del Sur’s mountainous areas are into the illegal drug business to support their other illicit activities.

Several police anti-drug operations have been launched in the province over the past eight months, he said. (PNA)

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