By LITO RULONA Correspondent NARCOTICS agents and the police worked in secret and kept any information about their plan on scions of the prominent Roa family in Balingasag, Misamis Oriental. Their work and utmost secrecy paid off--it resulted in the arrest of siblings Michael Roa and Porferio Roa Jr., brothers of town mayor Marietta Abogado, and two others on Thursday morning. There were indications that the suspects may have been engaged in something other than substance abuse, said an agent of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) who uses the assumed name of “Ben Kalibre” due to law enforcement reasons. Kalibre said Michael, a lawyer and former member of the Misamis Oriental provincial board, has been seen by the PDEA as a “high-value target” in Balingasag. Kalibre said Michael’s brother Porferio Jr. was also known as an alleged seller of drugs. The latter was caught by the police during an alleged drug session in Puerto, this city, in 2014 and was charged. He reportedly bailed out. Porferio Jr.’s son John Rey or Jay-R and Justine May Pontavila, the latter’s partner, were also arrested. To ensure the success of the joint PDEA-police operation, Kalibre said, they had to secure a search warrant from a court in Gingoog City instead of Cagayan de Oro to avoid the information about the planned raid from being leaked. “We tried at first to apply for a warrant here (Cagayan de Oro) but we were advised by the court to get one elsewhere for security reasons. It does not mean that we didn’t trust the courts here but we were just trying to avoid a leakage of information,” Kalibre said. He said authorities considered seeking a search warrant from a court in Malaybalay City in Misamis Oriental but eventually settled for one from a court in Gingoog City. It was Judge Merabio Undalok of the Regional Trial Court Branch 43 in Gingoog City who issued Search Warrant 86-2016 against the Roas. Kalibre said what law enforcers found during the raid in the two-story Roa ancestral house on Roa Street in Barangay 5, Balingasag, indicated that suspected shabu were being repacked there. He said PDEA agents and the police under Chief Insp. Ariel Pontillas found suspected shabu in the rooms of the Roa siblings, and the room being used by John Rey and Pontavila. The PDEA said suspected shabu in a big transparent plastic sachet, four “medium” sealed transparent sachet, two smaller sachets were seized in the rooms. In Michael’s room, authorities allegedly found 15 grams of suspected shabu estimated to be worth P75 thousand. In the room of Porferio Jr., law enforcers allegedly seized four sachets of suspected shabu weighing 20 grams and with an estimated street value of P100 thousand. Kalibre said drug paraphernalia and sachets of suspected shabu were also allegedly found in the room of John Rey and his partner. He said there were indications that the repacking was being done there.