Bareskrim Rules Out Sabotage in Sumatra Blackout

JAKARTA - The Indonesian National Police’s Criminal Investigation Agency (Bareskrim) has confirmed that the widespread power outage affecting several regions in Sumatra on Friday, 22 May 2026 was not caused by sabotage. “We can confirm there is no indication of sabotage or intentional action in the blackout incident,” said Deputy Chief of Bareskrim Polri, Inspector General Nunung Syaifuddin, during a press conference at the Bareskrim headquarters in Jakarta on Monday, 25 May 2026. “The preliminary suspicion points to technical factors and extreme weather causing disruptions to the electricity transmission system,” he added. Nunung explained that a joint team comprising the Special Crimes Directorate (Dittipidter), General Crimes Directorate (Dittipidum), Bareskrim Forensic Laboratory (Puslabfor), Jambi Provincial Police Criminal Investigation Unit (Ditreskrimsus), and representatives from PT PLN conducted field investigations on Sunday, 24 May 2026. Initial checks revealed a broken transmission cable on the 275kV SUTET Muara Bungo-Sungai Rumpeh line. “Based on initial field reports, the transmission cable break is suspected to have occurred suddenly due to weather factors and requires further technical and scientific investigation,” he said. Several witnesses, including the local RT head living near the SUTET site, were interviewed. According to Nunung, the damaged section of the transmission cable has been secured for further analysis by Bareskrim’s forensic lab to determine the exact cause of the damage. During a joint review with PLN, it was confirmed that Sumatra’s power system was operating normally before the disruption occurred around 6:44pm WIB on Friday. However, the disruption on the Muara Bungo-Sungai Rumpeh transmission line caused the Sumatra interconnected grid to fail, triggering blackouts in several areas including Aceh, North Sumatra, West Sumatra, Riau, Jambi, and parts of South Sumatra. Nunung stressed that the preliminary conclusion ruling out sabotage was also supported by the nature of the transmission cable damage.