Suspects in Bekasi gang rape identified

JAKARTA (JP): Bekasi police claim that they have identified the men believed to have raped a mother and her two teenage daughters during a pre-dawn burglary on Monday in the small, isolated village of Kampung Cimatis, Jati Karya, in Pondok Gede.

The incident took place at around 3:30 a.m. on Monday at the house of Acan, 45, in the Pondok Gede district of Bekasi, 30 kilometers east of Jakarta.

Acan told police that about eight people armed with sharp weapons broke into his house. However, before they broke into the house, located near the Jagorawi toll road, they tied up Acan's 18-year-old son, Ali, and his four friends who were sleeping on the house veranda.

Acan said he was also tied up later by the burglars in the living room.

Failing to find any valuables in the house, Acan said the group dragged Acan's wife, identified only as An, 43, to the kitchen and took turns raping her.

Later, the criminals raped both of Acan's daughters, identified only as Ng, 15, and Ac, 14, after dragging the junior high school students into two different rooms.

Acan told police that he saw at least six members of the group enter the two rooms by turns.

"They are animals," the father of six children said in disgust.

"We have formed two teams to hunt the suspects, whose identities we have determined," Bekasi police chief Lt. Col. Hari Pribadi told reporters after attending a ceremony for the establishment of the city police health information center yesterday.

According to Hari, the suspects might be the same ones that robbed the house of the head of a nearby village about an hour earlier.

"But this time they might have missed their target because this is the family of a poor farmer," he said. "They found nothing valuable in the house and then decided to rape the members of the family."

Hari, however, refused to name any of the rapists, saying only that at least five are suspected to have been involved.

Officer Hari said that the group managed only to steal two grams of gold jewelry from Acan's wife and three wristwatches from their house, which is located away from the public housing complexes.

In January last year, a mother, her four children between three to 14-years-old, and the mother's sister were brutally killed in the same area by a single suspect, who is still at large.(bsr)