COTABATO CITY — One of the suspects in the Sept. 2016 Davao City night market bombing, arrested and released last year, has yielded anew to the Cotabato City police office on Sunday.
Sr. Supt. Rolly Octavio, Cotabato City police director, said Mohammad Lalaog Chenikandiyil, accompanied by his counsel Wilmer Donasco, voluntarily surrendered to him at 1:20 p.m. Sunday.
The Criminal Investigation and Detection Group in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (CIDG-ARMM) is set to turn him over Monday to Davao police authorities.
“He insisted he was not involved in the Davao bombing and he wanted to clear his name,” Octavio told the PNA.
Octavio said Chenikandiyil, alias “Boy,” was included in the Department of National Defense (DND) arrest order No. 2 that DND Secretary Delfin Lorenzana issued following the declaration of martial law in Mindanao in the aftermath of the Marawi siege.
Chenikandiyil was among the four other bombing suspects arrested on October 27, 2016 in separate raids by CIDG-ARMM in Barangay Rosary Heights 7, Cotabato City and in Datu Odin Sinsuat, Maguindanao.
Also arrested in the raid were Zack Haron Villanueva Lopez, Jackson Mangulamas Usi, and Ausan Abdullah Mamasapano, according to then CIDG-ARRM Director Supt. Jimmy Daza.
All those arrested were then turned over to the Davao City police. But the Davao Regional Trial Court Branch 13 ordered the Davao police office to release Chenikandiyil on Nov. 11, 2016 after it granted the petition for writ of habeas corpus filed by his wife.
RTC-13 Presiding Judge Jill Jaugan-Lo, in special proceeding Nov. 9 last year, heard the petition of Allysanor Chenikandiyil against the police and CIDG-11 office.
Through lawyer Donasco, she stressed that her husband’s continued detention was unjustified since no formal charges have been filed against him since his arrest in Cotabato City up to the time he was transferred to CIDG Davao.
She said her husband detention exceeded 36 hours as allowed by the Revised Penal Code. If a case had been filed, she received no notice that a criminal case had been filed and his continued detention was not justified since no inquest proceeding was ever conducted.
At least 14 people were killed in the Sept. 2, 2016 bombing in the Davao night market along Roxas Boulevard and more than 50 others injured. (PNA)
