Communist rebels operating in Negros Island may have ordered the killing of Dr. Mary Rose Sancelan and her husband Edwin for disowning the New People’s Army (NPA) when she was “red-tagged” in 2017, a ranking police official said.
This, as Brig. Gen. Ronnie Montejo, director of the Central Visayas regional police, insisted that Sancelan had links with the local communist rebels through what he described as a Left-leaning religious group wherein she was an active member during her student days.
Montejo said that Sancelan was also monitored to be providing medical needs to wounded communist rebels.
After she was red-tagged in 2017 by the local anti-communist group Kagubak, Montejo said that Sancelan made an affidavit before the local police denying that she was JB Regalado, the spokesman of the local NPA group.
This reportedly angered the local NPA leadership, according to Montejo.
He added that Sancelan’s husband was monitored to be a member of the NPA before.
But Montejo said that the NPA-related killing is just one of the two angles they are looking into as the motive behind the assassination of the Sancelan couple in a subdivision in Guihulngan City in Negros Oriental on November 15.
Another suspect, according to Montejo, is a co-worker of Sancelan who got mad at her for implementing strict quarantine protocols for members of the local health office of Guihulngan City.
According to Montejo, Sancelan lodged a complaint against a male doctor on June 9 this year for sending her a hate text message that stemmed from the implementation of quarantine protocols.
Sancelan was the head of the local Inter-Agency Task Force on the Management of Emerging Infectious Disease (IATF-MEID) in Guihulngan City, being the head of the City Health Office.
Based on the investigation, the male doctor was allegedly overheard saying that he could hire an assassin to have Sancelan killed. (Aaron Recuenco)
