Cirebon. The West Java Police reenacted the 2016 murders of Vina Dewi Arsita and her boyfriend Muhammad Rizky Rudiana on Wednesday, following the recent arrest of the ninth suspect.

The reenactment drew condemnation from the suspect’s lawyers because it was conducted abruptly without prior notice.

"The defense team should have been notified beforehand about the reenactment, especially when it involved our client,” said Toni RM, an attorney for murder suspect Pegi Setiawan. “We learned about the reenactment from the media.”

Toni noted that the Penal Code requires the presence of the defense team when a criminal suspect facing a minimum prison sentence of five years is taken for a reenactment.

Pegi, who is accused of premeditated murder and rape, is facing the death penalty or life imprisonment.

“Without our presence, we are worried that Pegi was instructed to reenact actions he never did," Toni said.

Another attorney, Iriati Sugiati, said she immediately went to the alleged murder scenes in Cirebon upon learning about the reenactment but couldn’t arrive on time. She was unsure whether her client was taken to the scenes.

The reenactment was conducted at several locations in Cirebon on Wednesday evening.

The murder case, nearly eight years old, resurfaced after all eight convicts retracted their previous police depositions, claiming that they admitted to the murders under duress.

A separate defense team representing five of the convicts has argued that Vina and Rizky could have died in a traffic accident.

As the case drew public attention, the West Java Police announced the arrest of Pegi, one of three fugitives who had been on the run since August 2016.

Controversies continued after police said Pegi is the only fugitive and dismissed the presence of two other suspects.

Celebrity lawyer Hotman Paris Panjaitan, who represents the family of the late Vina, also criticized police for omitting the two suspects from their wanted list.

The court handed life imprisonment to seven of the eight convicts, with the remaining one sentenced to eight years in prison and released in 2020 for good behavior.

They were found guilty of murdering the couple in Cirebon, West Java, on August 27, 2016. The bodies were discovered on an elevated road the following day.

According to court documents, Vina was gang-raped by members of a motorcycle gang before she and her boyfriend were brutally murdered. Police initially identified 11 suspects in the case, but last week they announced that Pegi became the ninth and last suspect.
 

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