DOJ chief: 3 bodies dug up at Taal may be from drug war
As authorities searched for the missing “sabungeros” (cockfighting aficionados) believed buried in Taal Lake, another operation found and exhumed the remains of possible drug war victims from around the lake, Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla said on Wednesday.
Remulla said authorities were working to recover bodies that were buried around Taal in 2020 allegedly on the orders of police officers after none of the victims’ relatives came to claim the bodies in funeral parlors.
“We are exhuming them as we speak because we have to find out who these people are. They were never claimed,” he told reporters.
Remulla said three bodies were exhumed on Wednesday from areas around Taal, which he did not specify.
The Department of Justice will set up a DNA bank to properly identify the remains recovered from the lake, he said.
Until Remulla gave a report on the three exhumed bodies, the multiagency search in Taal that began last week was officially only for the remains of the 34 people connected to online cockfighting who disappeared between April 2021 and January 2022.
The bodies of the missing persons, now collectively known as sabungeros, were allegedly dumped in the freshwater lake in Batangas province after being killed for match-fixing or cheating, according to a whistleblower.
They ‘may intersect’
Remulla on Monday said investigators were looking at possible connections between the perpetrators in the sabungeros case and those who carried out extrajudicial killings (EJKs) in the so-called drug war of the Duterte administration.
“The people who undertake the contractual killings may intersect somehow with the drug war and with the ‘e-sabong.’ There are people involved in killing during the drug war and in e-sabong. That’s as far as we can trace right now, but we will have to establish clearer links to each other,” he said.
It was in this context that Remulla projected that the ongoing search in Taal Lake might go on indefinitely. In a later statement, on Tuesday, he said it might take up to six months.
Remulla had also said that the search team for the sabungeros initially focused on a fish cage area that was covered by a fishpond lease agreement and owned by one of the “persons of interest” in the case.
“[It] is owned by an operative who was part of the contractors that disposed of the remains of these people. But we also know of another location which was probably used not for e-sabong, but for something else,” he said.
“Somewhere there in Taal also, very near there, but we think [these sites] may have been used for the drug war,” Remulla added.
Napolcom complaints
The whistleblower in the sabungeros case, Julie Patidongan, had also cited a possible link between Duterte’s antidrug crackdown and the mass disappearance of the cockfighting aficionados.
In a media interview on Monday, after he lodged an administrative complaint against 12 active and six dismissed police officers with the National Police Commission (Napolcom), Patidongan identified two of the 18 respondents as Police Col. Jacinto Malinao Jr. and Lt. Col. Ryan Jay Orapa.
Malinao was chief of the Batangas provincial police, while Orapa was previously assigned to the Highway Patrol Group.
“Police Lt. Col. Ryan Jay Orapa was introduced to me when he was still a major by Col. Malinao because Col. Malinao was a friend of Engineer Celso Salazar. They were close. It all began there,” Patidongan said.
“They were the individuals tasked to kill people during the war on drugs before. That’s it,” he added.
Patidongan and five other security personnel of the Manila Arena cockpit in the capital were charged with kidnapping and serious illegal detention of the sabungeros.
A Manila court has allowed them to post bail, but the Court of Appeals overturned this in December 2024.
Patidongan, now under the protective custody of the Philippine National Police, has applied for inclusion in the witness protection program.
The case stemmed from the alleged abduction of cockfighters Mark Joseph Velasco, Marlon Baccay, James Baccay, Rowel Gomez, John Claude Inonog and Rondel Cristorum by the security personnel and their cohorts.
They were last seen being taken to the basement of the Manila Arena on Jan. 13, 2022, before they were forced into a gray van, according to witnesses.
Summons for 12 cops
Meanwhile, the Napolcom has given the 12 active police officers five days to respond to Patidongan’s administrative complaint. The agency’s Inspection, Monitoring and Investigation Service served the summons on the 12 on Tuesday.
“Failure to do so constitutes a waiver of their rights to submit the same,” Rafael Calinisan, Napolcom vice chair and executive officer, said in a message to reporters. “The complaint will then be evaluated whether or not it would proceed to a formal charge.”
The 12 were among 15 policemen—active, dismissed and retired—whom the PNP earlier placed under restrictive custody at Camp Crame after being tagged by Patidongan.
The PNP Forensic Group (PNP FG) is now examining three of the 91 bone pieces recovered from Taal Lake last week to see if they are of human or nonhuman origin.
The three pieces were among 45 bone pieces found in one sack retrieved from the lake in Barangay Balakilong, Laurel town, on July 10, according to the PNP FG.
There is a separate set of six bone pieces to be studied, from the 46 pieces recovered from the fourth sack and fifth sack retrieved from the lake on July 12.
The second sack and third sack retrieved from the lake on July 11 contained “debris,” the forensics unit said.
“It brings us closer to the conclusion of the story. It all ties up now, what Alias Totoy said, if those were really found,” Interior Secretary Jonvic Remulla, a brother of the justice department chief, said on Wednesday.
“We have videos of the abduction … Now, if a body was found, then it all ties up that it is a conspiracy, grand conspiracy amongst all of them,” Jonvic Remulla said.
