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| Sources: https://www.viva.co.id/ |
Discovery of the Body
By the morning of Wednesday, October 4, 2023, the events that had unfolded hours earlier in Subang Regency remained unknown to the public.
Around 9:00 a.m. local time, residents near an irrigation canal in Blok Sukatani, Anjatan District, Indramayu Regency, made a disturbing discovery. A young boy's body was seen floating in the water, prompting immediate calls to local authorities.
Officers from the Anjatan Sector Police (Polsek Anjatan) responded to the scene, secured the area, and began an initial examination while awaiting investigators from the Indramayu Police Criminal Investigation Unit (Satreskrim Polres Indramayu).
According to police, the victim was fully clothed when recovered from the canal. Investigators also observed visible injuries to the head and signs that both hands had been bound behind his back. The condition of the body immediately raised suspicions that the death was not accidental.
The victim was subsequently transported to Bhayangkara Hospital for forensic examination, while investigators began documenting the scene, collecting physical evidence, and interviewing witnesses living near the irrigation canal.
At that stage, authorities had not yet publicly confirmed the victim's identity.
As news of the discovery spread through local communities and social media, residents from Parigimulya Village in neighboring Subang Regency began to suspect that the victim could be Muhammad Rauf, the 13-year-old boy who had long been known throughout the village because of his difficult living conditions.
That information quickly reached investigators.
Using witness statements and identification procedures, police confirmed that the victim was indeed Muhammad Rauf. The confirmation immediately shifted the focus of the investigation from identifying an unknown victim to determining the circumstances that had led to his death.
Investigators soon realized that the location where the body was discovered was unlikely to be the primary crime scene.
The distance between Rauf's home village in Subang Regency and the irrigation canal in Indramayu, combined with the physical condition of the body, suggested that the victim had likely been transported after sustaining his injuries.
This assessment prompted investigators to expand the investigation beyond Indramayu.
Later that same day, teams from the Indramayu Police coordinated with authorities in Subang Regency to retrace the victim's final known movements. Their investigation led them to the residence of Rauf's maternal grandfather in Parigimulya Village, where officers conducted a detailed crime scene examination.
According to police, investigators discovered several bloodstains inside the residence that had not been completely removed. The suspected blood evidence, along with other forensic findings, strengthened investigators' belief that a violent assault had occurred inside the house before the victim was transported elsewhere.
During the search, officers also seized several items that investigators believed could be connected to the injuries documented during the autopsy. These included a woodworking saw, wooden sticks, and a metal rod, all of which were sent for forensic examination.
The discovery of physical evidence inside the residence significantly accelerated the investigation.
Rather than relying solely on witness testimony, investigators were now able to compare crime scene evidence, forensic findings, and the reconstructed timeline. The combination of these elements allowed police to establish what they described as a continuous sequence of events linking the alleged assault in Subang to the recovery of Rauf's body in Indramayu.
Within hours of identifying the victim, investigators had transformed what initially appeared to be an unexplained death into a coordinated homicide investigation spanning two regencies.
The rapid progress of the investigation would soon culminate in the arrest of three members of Rauf's own family, less than a day after his body was discovered.