A Jakarta man, identified by his initials MA, has been arrested for allegedly assaulting a minor during a confrontation on the Jagorawi toll road on Wednesday.
In a viral post, a man named Reza Achmad said he was driving his car on the toll road with his 14-year-old brother, identified as RA, when MA abruptly stopped his car, which sported a military sticker on the license plate, in front of theirs. A livid MA got out of his car and yelled at Reza, who MA accused of braking abruptly earlier while he was driving behind him.
Then, according to Reza, MA assaulted both him and his brother.
“The punching did happen, the victim was my own little brother. He hit my brother until his nose bled. I was also strangled,” Reza told Kompas yesterday.
The Jakarta Metro Police yesterday arrested MA, who confessed to assaulting Reza and his brother. Despite the military sticker on MA’s license plate, the police ruled out that he was actually a member of the military and said that the sticker was just an accessory.
The police also found no evidence of Reza braking his car abruptly in front of MA’s car, which supposedly led to their confrontation.
“We looked at the CCTV recording, [according to the culprit] the victim braked abruptly, but it was not shown on the CCTV,” Jakarta Metro Police Adjunct Grand Commissioner Sapta Maulana told Kompas.
The police are still investigating MA, but it’s likely he will face charges including assault as well as violating the country’s child protection law.
Despite being illegal, many Indonesian motorists equip their vehicles with accessories sporting police or military logos, which are easily available for purchase. Some use these accessories to justify breaking the law, as in the case of one civilian who was fined for using illegal police lights to skip a traffic jam during an incident that went viral last year.
