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AYAPURA: Papua Police chief Insp. Gen. Paulus Waterpauw has denied accusations that officers from the Mimika Baru Police assaulted and tortured a local man, a picture of whom, stripped and with his hands tied, has gone viral on social media.

'€œIn reality, officers saved the man in question from an angry mob that had caught him raping a 10-year-old child,'€ Paulus said when contacted by The Jakarta Post on Friday.

The man, identified as AW, 20, had been caught in flagrante delicto raping the child, Paulus said, adding that he had fled but had been caught. Locals then repeatedly beat him and bound his wrists before reporting him to the Mimika Baru Police.

Paulus insisted that his men had acted according to procedure, and that the video in question, by showing the suspect only once already in police custody, created the misleading impression that it was the police who had stripped him.