Manila: A pregnant woman facing drug charges in Zamboanga City, Philippines, escaped from custody recently after misleading jail personnel that she is in medical emergency and was about to give birth.

Floramar Satim Usman, who is on the eight months into her pregnancy, had complained to policemen guarding her that she is experiencing abdominal pain, Bombo Radyo reported.

Assuming that the detainee was about to give birth or had suffered problems with her pregnancy, two police officers assigned to guard her, Alsid Bungkak and Julhada Tungupun, took her to the Zamboanga City Medical Centre.

Arriving at the hospital, doctors recommended that she be taken to the operating room for an examination as the two police officers stood guard at the exits.

At this point, Usman, who was booked for drug offences after she was arrested in a buy-bust operation last week, saw an opportunity to escape.

When the doctor and nurse came back to examine her, she had already disappeared.

The police guards are now under investigation as to how a pregnant detainee was able to escape.

Philippine jails are notorious for being lax especially to drug suspects.

Even inside jails, drug suspects have been able to carry out their illegal activities. In November 2014, agents of the National Bureau of Investigation conducted a raid inside the state penitentiary, the New Bilibid Prisons in southern Metro Manila.

Several suspects were arrested in the raid including convicted so-called drug lords.

Justice Secretary Leila de Lima had said that the illegal activities taking place inside the New Bilibid Prisons were known to prison officials. The inmates had reportedly been using mobile phones with internet connections to conduct their illegal transactions.

Former Bureau of Corrections director Dionisio Santiago, who was in office until 2011, said drug lords who had been sent to jail continued to perform their illegal activities under the very noses of prison guards and officials.

“They have their own laboratory inside the prison where they cook the drugs,” he said.