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wo university students have gone missing within the last couple of weeks and the Jakarta Police say that there is no indication that their disappearances have anything to do with religious sects.

In April, a similar trend of missing students and others surfaced and the National Police intensified a crackdown on the Islamic State of Indonesia (NII) group, which was suspected of having recruited people by brainwashing them.

Jakarta Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Baharudin Djafar said on Thursday that it was too soon to conclude that the recent cases of missing students had any correlation with the ones taking place in April.

“We are still investigating the cases and gathering data. We have yet to find any connection with a religious cult,” he said.

The first student to go missing recently was Nadia Dwi Rachma, 20, a Trisakti University student who has not returned home nor been seen for more than a week since Oct. 24.

Baharudin said that after questioning several witnesses, one of them said they saw Nadia with a man at a mall in Kelapa Gading, North Jakarta, on Oct. 31.

Baharudin also said that another witness claimed that Nadia visited an apartment compound on Oct. 21, three days before she went missing.

“She [Nadia] told the witness she was meeting relatives at the apartments,” he said. “However, the parents said that they had no relatives in that apartment building,” he added.

Nadia reportedly did not attend classes for two semesters even though her parents had paid the tuition.

Separately, a student of Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University (UIN) in South Jakarta named Dwi Oktaviany went missing on Oct. 31.

Dwi’s mother, Salamah, said that her daughter went missing when left alone at home in Ciputat. “Her father and I left home to go to the market on Oct. 31 and she was at home,” she said.

Salamah said that she tried to contact Dwi on her cellular phone, but did not receive any response. Dwi’s parents reported Dwi’s disappearance to the Ciputat Police, who are investigating the case.

Contacted separately on Thursday, NII Crisis Center chairman Ken Setiawan said that he had been in contact with Nadia’s parents and no concrete evidence had been found to link her disappearance to the NII.

“However, we heard from her parents that [Nadia] liked to ask for money for unclear purposes. NII, during recruitment, always stresses to their new followers that it is important for them to gather funds from their loved ones,” he said.

— JP/Hans David Tampubolon