KARAPATAN lambasted the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) for filing a motion for reconsideration with the Court of Appeals (CA) seeking to bring back to jail an ailing octogenerian who had been wrongly arrested and detained.
Eighty-one year old Prudencio “Tay Pruding” Calubid Jr. was ordered released by the CA’s 16th Division on June 30, 2025 after it granted the habeas corpus petition filed on his behalf by Calubid’s daughter. Tay Pruding, a retired technician and former overseas Filipino worker, was misrepresented by his captors as Prudencio Calubid, a consultant of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) with a PhP7.8 million bounty on his head. The NDFP consultant was abducted and forcibly disappeared in Camarines Sur with five others by suspected State agents on June 26, 2006.
In its ruling, the CA’s 16th Division chastised the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group of the Philippine National Police (PNP-CIDG) for its lack of due diligence for failing to “conduct even basic verification within the very community where Prudencio Jr. had resided for several years.” In contrast, said the Court, petitioner Calubid presented overwhelming evidence to prove his distinct identity from the NDFP consultant.
“Utterly devoid of substantive issues,” said KARAPATAN secretary general Cristina Palabay, “the OSG’s motion for reconsideration harps on technicalities and merely repeats the PNP-CIDG’s false claims that it had conducted ‘extensive investigation and intelligence gathering’ to verify Calubid’s identity.”
“The OSG should have better things to do than to waste State resources on efforts that would throw an innocent, old and ailing man in jail just to save face,” concluded Palabay.