CIDG: Return 76 guns,
pay P20M in damages
BY CARLA GOMEZ

The chief of the Anti Organized Crime Division of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group yesterday asked the Bacolod Regional Trial Court Branch 42 to turn over the 76 firearms seized from the ancestral house of Pulupandan Mayor Magdaleno Peña, to Branch 85 of the Quezon City RTC.

Senior Supt. Jose Mario Espino, chief of the Anti Organized Crime Division of the CIDG, SPO3 Rosendo Bersal and SPO2 Jeyvee Aglipay, as intervenors, filed an answer-in-intervention with counterclaim, and motion for the return of seized firearms in response to a replevin case filed by Pulupandan Mayor-elect Miguel Peña and four firms.

Espino also filed a supplemental motion for the return of the seized firearms to RTC Branch 85 instead of the PNP Scene of the Crime Office of Negros Occidental where they were previously held.

Talisay man rapes niece,
gets 40 years
BY CARLA GOMEZ

A resident of Talisay City, Negros Occidental, was sentenced yesterday to 40 years imprisonment for raping his niece when she was 9 years old.

Bacolod Regional Trial Court Branch 41 Judge Ray Alan Drilon sentenced the man, whose name is being withheld to protect the identity of his victim, to reclusion perpetua, and to pay his niece P75,000 in moral damages and P25,000 as exemplary damages.

The victim said she was 9 years old when the first cousin of her mother raped her at her home on April 19, 2006. He warned her not to tell her mother or anybody what had happened.

‘Evidence room
was ransacked’
BY CARLA GOMEZ

Two court sheriffs forced open the evidence room at the Negros Occidental Provincial Police Office compound Friday and took the firearms seized from the ancestral house of Pulupandan Mayor Magdaleno Peña, Chief Inspector Ramonit Javier said yesterday.

Javier, who was relieved as provincial head of the PNP Crime Laboratory and Scene of the Crime Office of Negros Occidental Friday, said he filed a blotter report on the incident that took place at about 1:47 p.m. Friday, before Police Station 4 in Bacolod City.

He said the custodian of the evidence room was out of town and the sheriffs, acting on a writ of replevin to recover 76 firearms issued by Bacolod Regional Trial Court Judge Fernando Elumba, could not wait.