Back in July, Andro Supriyanto and Nurdin Priyanto, two buskers from Cipulir, South Jakarta, sued the Jakarta Police for falsely accusing them of a murder that they were later completely exonerated of. Today the verdict in the lawsuit was delivered by the South Jakarta District Court, and while Andro and Nurdin won the case, they were only awarded a tiny fraction of the compensation they were seeking for the pain, trauma and damage to their reputations that they have endured.
Andro and Nurdin were sentenced to seven years in prison by the same court in October 2013 after confessing to the murder of Dicky Maulana in Cipulir in June 2013.
Andro later told the media that he and Nurdin had found Dicky bleeding on the street and had tried to help him. When police arrived at the scene, the two were taken to the station to be questioned as witnesses, but Andro said that police actually beat him and Nurdin relentlessly for three days until they were finally coerced into confessing to Dicky’s murder.
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.
The pair, along with their representatives from the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute (LBH) then filed a lawsuit against the police seeking Rp 1.3 billion in damages from their ordeal.
The judge in the case agreed that they had been falsely arrested for murder and wrongfully imprisoned for 8 months, but decided to award the pair just Rp 72 million.
The judge ruled that Andro and Nurdin should only be compensated for the earnings that they lost while they were imprisoned. As buskers, the judge calculated that they could make Rp 150,000 per day, which would mean they lost Rp 36 million over their eight long months of false imprisonment.
The judge rejected the other material damages in the case, such as the cost of hospitalization that Andro and Nurdin underwent during their detention due to injuries suffered at the hands of the police.
He also flatly rejected all of the immaterial damage claims in the lawsuit, such as the lifelong physical disabilities caused by the beatings they endured, the irrevocable damage to their reputations that will prevent them from attaining gainful employment and the psychological trauma that will also stay with them forever. The judge decided that none of those damages could be proven.
So the judge awarded each claimant the Rp 36 million in lost wages for a total of Rp 72 million, which will be paid for by the state.
Beyond the injustice these two men have suffered, one must wonder at the inconsistency of the Indonesian legal system – which is prepared to execute drug mules for some sort of imagined deterrent effect, but is unwilling to do anything but the bare minimum to punish law enforcers that have been caught red-handed subverting justice. This case will just teach the police that even if they are proven to have falsely imprisoned people, they will suffer only the smallest of consequences for it.
