Police crack case of dismembered woman

Jakarta (JP): Police in Malang, East Java, say they may have cracked the case of the murder of a young woman, whose head, intestines and limbs were found floating in the Brantas river last month.

Five men have been arrested and two others are wanted in connection with the murder of the woman, identified as 21-year- old Sumiati.

Preliminary investigations of the five men suggest that Sumiati may have been gang-raped before she was hacked to pieces and then dumped in different plastic bags into the river.

One bag, containing her head, was found by children while they were playing along the river bank. Villagers in the area subsequently found the other parts, including her thighs, arms and intestines.

It took a while for the police to be able to identify the body because all the parts were swollen. Having done that, they then had to track down the murderers, and this came almost by chance.

They got their break when a man reported to the police that he found bloodstains in the car which he had been loaned to a group of young people. The car was believed to have been used by the youths to rob houses.

The man helped the police identify the youths who borrowed the car and all but two were subsequently rounded up.

The bloodstains found on the car matched Sumiati's blood type and police also confiscated clothes belonging to the victim from one of the suspects.

The five men first denied any involvement with the killing but they subsequently confessed to the brutal crime, according to Malang police as reported by the Antara news agency.

Jealousy was believed to have been at the root of the rape and murder because Sumiati, who had been the girlfriend of one of the suspects, had been seen going out with a man from out of town the night she was murdered, the police said.

The five men have been identified as Muafi (20 years old), Sumarto (26), Sumarto (17), Heri (19) and Samad (30). The two men still at large are identified as Sjukur and Samuri. (arf)