“When I came home for the first time in February [after months of treatment in Singapore], I saw the perpetrator standing there [across the road from my house],” Novel claimed on Sunday, as quoted by tempo.co.

Novel has given the police information about his attackers, and the police distributed sketches of the four suspects.

He later blamed the police for failing to catch the perpetrators and resolve the acid attack on him after more than a year of investigation, thus enabling the perpetrators to threaten him again.

On April 11 last year, the investigator was attacked by two unidentified men who threw acid at his face. He was brought to Singapore to undergo a series of operations on his injured eyes.

At the time of the attack, Novel had been leading a KPK investigation into the e-ID graft case, which has reportedly caused Rp 2.3 trillion (US$163 million) in state losses and implicated several members of the House of Representatives and high-ranking government officials.

The lack of progress in the investigation prompted the antigraft body’s workers union to urge President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo to form an independent fact-finding team to solve the case.

“It’s not too late to form such a team, because solving Novel’s case is one of the nation’s priorities,” said the union’s chairman, Yudi Purnomo.

Besides talking about his case and condition, Novel expressed his wish to return to the office immediately. The investigator has yet to return to work since coming back from Singapore in February, as he was unable to see and read well because of his heavily injured left eye. (kuk)

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