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Prosecutors seek 12 years for Sambo's bodyguard, 8 for wife
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Putri Candrawathi (right), the wife of former National Police internal affairs division head, talks to the press after visiting her husband in detention in the Mobile Brigade (Brimob) headquarters in Depok, West Java, on Aug. 7, 2022. (Kompas TV/-)
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rosecutors have demanded that the wife and former bodyguard of ex-National Police internal affairs chief Ferdy Sambo be sentenced to eight and 12 years in prison, respectively, for their alleged roles in the murder of police officer Brig. Nofriansyah Yosua Hutabarat in July 2022.
At the South Jakarta District Court on Wednesday, prosecutors contended that Ferdy’s wife Putri Chandrawathi had helped plan and set in motion the murder of Ferdy’s aide-de-camp. Her involvement in the plot, the prosecution said, began after she claimed that Yosua had raped her in Magelang, Central Java, on July 7, 2022, a day before Yosua’s murder.
Prosecutors alleged on Wednesday that many of Putri’s statements were fallacious and that there was no convincing evidence of sexual assault, pointing instead to a possible affair between Putri and Yosua, as a polygraph test had suggested that Putri had lied when she denied the affair.
“If a sexual assault did not actually occur, then there is a strong indication that [Putri’s account of the] rape was part of a scenario made up by the defendant to cover up what actually happened,” said one of the prosecutors during the trial session.
Ferdy, who was in Jakarta when Putri told him the story of the disputed rape, prosecutors said, made arrangements in the early hours of July 8, 2022, for Putri, Yosua and Richard Eliezer, Ferdy’s bodyguard, to return home, along with another aide-de-camp, Brig. Ricky Rizal, and Kuat Ma’ruf, a domestic assistant to the family. Putri had asked for Ricky and Kuat to join so that they could provide back-up for Sambo in their eventual confrontation with Yosua, prosecutors claimed.
They also pointed to the fact that Putri had instructed Ricky to secure Yosua’s firearms in Magelang as further evidence of her alleged involvement in the murder plot.
Upon her arrival in Jakarta, prosecutors said Putri lured an unsuspecting Yosua to Ferdy’s official residence in South Jakarta, the scene of the crime, under the pretext of self-isolation after traveling during the COVID-19 pandemic. She and Ferdy had also informed Richard, Ricky and Kuat of their plan to kill Yosua by staging a shootout and promised to pay them to act as accomplices, according to prosecutors.
