Actress Nikita Mirzani has had a tough couple of days after she was arrested by police at the Hotel Indonesia Kempinski last Thursday during an undercover prostitution sting. Although she has already been released and was not charged with any wrongdoing by the police (she says she was just changing her clothes when she was caught), the local media has run story after story salaciously speculating about her alleged crimes and commentators have sent her plenty of demeaning, judgemental comments on social media.
But Nikita, who went on to the popular TV show Indonesia Lawyers Club last night to defend herself, said some of the worst treatment she’s received was from the policemen who arrested her on that Thursday night.
Nikita said that police initially told her at the hotel that the arrest would be kept a secret and that there wouldn’t be any reporters or photographers there to take her picture as officers led her out of the hotel.
“The police were there in the hotel room saying everything will go well. No photographs, no reporters, said the officers. ‘You take it easy. You just follow the process’. But once we were out of the room, through the back door, there were photographers everywhere,” Nikita said.
Not only that, she says the police made rude, vulgar remarks to her throughout the process.
“So you’ve been a sex worker for a long time, right? How much do you cost?” Nikita said, imitating the police officers.
The actress wiped tears from her eyes as she talked about another police officer who tried to roughly grab her hand, which she then pushed away.
While one could argue that Nikita came on the show just to garner public sympathy (and indeed she did talk about how she wanted to restore her good name on the show), we certainly don’t find it unbelievable that the Jakarta Police could treat a suspect so terribly.
It’s also very suspicious that there were so many photographers at the hotel ready to take Nikita’s picture after the supposedly “undercover” police operation. There have been rumors floating around that the sting was timed to draw the media’s attention away from other, far more important stories happening at the moment.
