Prior to his appointment as chief detective, Agus led the police’s Security Management Agency (Baharkam), but he was better known for his former position as North Sumatra Police chief.

Agus was also one of five three-star commissioner generals recommended to the President by the National Police Commission (Kompolnas) as frontrunners for the National Police chief position last month, though it was Gen. Listyo Sigit Prabowo who was handpicked by the President for the police’s top job.

Agus had been recommended by Listyo to succeed him as Bareskrim head, according to a telegram Listyo issued on Feb. 18.

Graduating from the Police Academy in 1989, Agus spent his career in numerous positions, including as division head of the Jakarta Police Special Crimes Investigation Department (Reskrimsus) in 2006.

Agus is also known for handling the high-profile blasphemy case that implicated former Jakarta governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, a close ally of Jokowi, in 2016, when he served as Bareskrim general crimes director. The case was seen as a significant factor in Basuki's defeat in the bitterly contested Jakarta gubernatorial election of 2017. 

Agus was transferred to the North Sumatra Police to serve as deputy chief shortly after the court handed down its verdict in the case, and in the following year, he rose to the chief position.

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Being named in a strategic post to lead the largest police department overseeing roughly 12 subdivisions, Agus will be in charge of investigations into criminal cases ranging from general crimes such as murder and theft to complex emerging crimes like cybercrimes, organized drug trafficking and corruption.

Bambang Rukminto of the Institute for Security and Strategic Studies (ISESS) dubbed the position of Bareskrim head “the grim reaper”.

“It will become a problem when a person leading Bareskrim has no integrity to fulfil his mandate, tasks and functions and is influenced by other [political or personal] interests,” Bambang said. According to him, the main problem was the 2002 Police Law, which gave "too much authority without providing strong institutionalized control".

Agus’ appointment as the new chief detective also comes after Jokowi said he was considering revising the draconian Electronic Information and Transactions (ITE) Law and publicly ordered the police to be more “selective” in handling online defamation cases.

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Agus is expected to oversee the implementation of a set of guidelines that the police have just issued for the cyberlaw, which pro-democracy activists say has been repeatedly abused to stifle criticism.

Neta S. Pane of the NGO Indonesia Police Watch (IPW) lamented that the police had been putting their focus in the “the cyberspace war” entirely on social media, all the while ignoring the glaring existence of cybercrimes like internet business fraud, online sex trafficking and online gambling.

“As the new Bareskrim head, Agus is supposed to understand which parts of the ITE Law need to be revised or strengthened,” Neta said.

Nevertheless, he expressed hope that the police investigators under Agus' leadership would probe the killing of six members of the recently banned hardline Islam Defenders Front (FPI) in December last year and the terrorist attack in Sigi in Central Sulawesi that killed four civilians in November.

Agus’ track record was not without flaws, with the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) pointing to “his failure” to provide a transparent probe into the death of environmental lawyer Golfried Siregar when Agus led the North Sumatra Police.

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Golfried, a lawyer who represented the North Sumatra chapter of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment, was found severely wounded and robbed on a roadside in Medan in October 2019. The regional police came to the conclusion that Golfried died of a single-vehicle crash and suspected him of being under the influence of alcohol. But environmental and human rights activists demanded the police probe further into the case, considering the fact that, at the time of his death, Golfried was handling several high-profile cases of environmental destruction allegedly involving government officials and businessmen.

Kontras activist Andi Muhammad Rezaldy has called on Agus as the new chief detective to reopen the case -- even though it is under the jurisdiction of the North Sumatra Police.

The chief detective post has also come to be seen as a stepping stone to the highest job in the police force of late, particularly after Listyo followed in the footsteps of his immediate predecessor, Idham Aziz. However, naming a police chief is the prerogative of the President, and past events show that certain patterns of appointment may be short-lived.