Deputy Chief of the National Police Commissioner General Dedi Prasetyo delivered the statement during his visit to the West Sumatra Police’s Ante Mortem Post at Bhayangkara Hospital in Padang on Thursday.
“The team is using fingerprint examinations to accelerate the identification process for victims of the natural disaster in West Sumatra,” he said.
Prasetyo explained that the fingerprint method involves trained identification personnel whose expertise provides efficiency and an accuracy rate of up to 99 percent. This helps speed up the identification of bodies recovered from disaster sites.
“If the victims’ fingerprints are still retrievable, the process conducted by the Polri Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) team can be accelerated,” he added.
For victims whose condition no longer allows fingerprint collection, DNA testing will be carried out.
“The next step is DNA testing, which will be matched with the DNA of the victims’ family members. The examination will be conducted in Jakarta,” Prasetyo said.
He assured that Polri’s DNA laboratory in Jakarta is fully equipped, allowing results to be completed within three days.
“We continue to optimize the roles of the DVI and Inafis (Indonesian Automatic Fingerprint Identification System) teams so the bodies can be properly identified and returned to their families for burial,” he said.
Prasetyo also reminded police personnel to maintain security and public order as recovery efforts continue in the affected areas.
As of Thursday, the West Sumatra Police DVI team reported that 200 people have died in the disaster across several regions of the province.
Of that total, 174 victims have been identified, while 26 remain in the identification process. Based on DVI data, among the 174 identified victims, 86 are male and 87 are female. The identification process is still ongoing.
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Translator: Fathul Abdi, Kuntum Khaira Riswan
Editor: Primayanti
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