Andro Supriyanto and Nurdin Priyanto, two buskers from Cipulir, South Jakarta, are in the South Jakarta District Court today for their first hearing session after the pair sued the police for falsely accusing them of murder.
Andro and Nurdin were sentenced to seven years in prison by the same court in October 2013 for the murder of Dicky Maulana in Cipulir in June 2013. Four others – who were minors – were sentenced to three to four years in prison for the same crime.
However, in March 2014, Andro and Nurdin were cleared of all charges by the South Jakarta District Court after their appeal, which was built on the fact that the police had insufficient evidence against the pair, succeeded. The Supreme Court also declared them to be innocent in March 2016 after further appeal from the case prosecutors.
Now, the two are suing the police for the ordeal and punishments they had to go through over the years for a crime they did not commit.
“The total for the damages amount to about Rp 1 billion,” said Arief Maulana, their legal representative from the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute (LBH), as quoted by Vivanews today prior to the hearing.
In an interview with the media last month, Andro revealed that the police used violence on himself and Nurdin as they were coerced into making a confession for the murder.
“We found the victim (Dicky Maulana) who was bleeding, so we gave him food and water. But we were taken into the precinct as witnesses, and then we were taken to the Jakarta Metro Police headquarters. There, they interrogated us and beat us,” Andro said, as quoted by CNN Indonesia.
Andro said that the interrogation and beatings lasted for three days.
“Because we didn’t have the strength, we finally confessed,” he said.
If Andro and Nurdin succeed in court, their case could lend credibility to other allegations of police brutality against the so-called wong cilik (little people) in order to coerce them to confess for crimes they did not commit. One of the most high profile cases involving those allegations is the Jakarta Intercultural School (JIS) child sex abuse case, in which five school janitors confessed, allegedly after enduring torture by police during which one of them died.
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