When police knocked on a family’s door in Tangerang, on the outskirts of Jakarta, to say that a body in a morgue belonged to their long‑missing father, the grief felt abrupt but final. Weeks later, however, a DNA test reportedly showed the remains were not his, plunging the family back into uncertainty and prompting them to file a police report. The case has reignited debate in Indonesia about how authorities identify unknown bodies and communicate with families in missing‑person investigations.

Image Illustration. Photo by Will Gullo on Unsplash

A Family Caught Between Grief and Doubt

According to local accounts, the Tangerang resident disappeared under unclear circumstances, leaving his wife and children to search hospitals, police posts, and social media for any trace. Weeks later, police contacted the family, saying they believed they had found him among unidentified remains. Officials reportedly relied first on physical characteristics and context before turning to DNA testing as a confirmatory tool.

The family, still hoping he was alive somewhere, agreed to DNA sampling. When the laboratory results reportedly came back as non‑identical, it meant the body belonged to someone else. Instead of closure, the test reopened every question. Convinced that the initial notification had been premature and potentially negligent, relatives went back to the police to file a complaint and demand a formal clarification of how the identification had been handled.

Indonesian police routinely turn to genetic testing to identify bodies in complex or decomposed cases—ranging from terror suspects like militant Daeng Koro, whose death was confirmed through DNA in 2015, to victims of transport crashes and natural disasters. But for ordinary families, the science can feel opaque, especially when preliminary conclusions are reversed.

How DNA Identification Works — and Why It Matters

Forensic DNA testing has become a cornerstone of modern investigations, including the identification of unknown remains. Short tandem repeat (STR) profiling compares specific regions of DNA from a body with samples from possible relatives. A high proportion of matching markers across these regions can confirm a biological relationship with a statistical probability often exceeding 99.9 percent in parent–child tests. In contrast, a non‑match—like the one the Tangerang family says they received—means the profiles are inconsistent with a direct biological link, and the identification should be discarded.

Indonesian police laboratories have expanded their DNA capabilities in recent years, often working under ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation standards for testing and calibration laboratories, which require strict quality controls and validation. Private labs in Indonesia similarly advertise accreditation from bodies such as AABB and CAP, underscoring how central DNA science has become to legal and family disputes alike. Yet experts note that while lab work is tightly regulated, the human side of identification—how information is conveyed to families—can be inconsistent, especially in under‑resourced jurisdictions.

Indonesia’s Missing Persons and Identification Challenges

Indonesia does not publish a single, consolidated national figure for missing adults each year, but the challenges are visible in high‑profile disappearances. In 2025, for example, police in Jakarta and surrounding areas were still searching for a six‑year‑old boy named Alvaro months after he was reported missing, relying partly on DNA to analyze remains that might match him. In that case, as in others, investigators faced delays in reporting and gaps in CCTV footage, illustrating structural hurdles that are common across the country’s sprawling urban and peri‑urban areas.

Globally, identification can be especially difficult when remains are degraded or fragmentary, or when records are incomplete. The International Committee of the Red Cross has warned that long‑term unresolved missing‑person cases impose a heavy psychological and economic toll on families, who often live in “ambiguous loss” without the certainty that a confirmed death certificate can bring. In Indonesia, where disasters and accidents periodically produce mass casualties, authorities have increasingly turned to DNA to bring answers—but missteps early in the process can compound trauma rather than resolve it.

Why Non‑Identical DNA Results Trigger Legal Action

For the Tangerang family, the core of the grievance is not the science but the sequence. They say they were effectively told their father was dead before the DNA report, only to learn later that the test excluded him as the biological relative of the body in question. In their view, the premature notification amounted to official error and inflicted avoidable emotional harm.

Indonesian law allows citizens to report alleged misconduct or negligence by state officials, including police, to both internal affairs units and external oversight bodies such as the National Police Commission. While it is rare for families to challenge identification procedures in court, legal experts say non‑identical DNA results can bolster claims that authorities acted hastily or failed to follow established protocols for confirming a person’s identity before notifying next of kin.

Recent cases in Indonesia underscore how DNA outcomes can quickly shift the legal landscape. In August 2025, a highly publicised paternity dispute involving former West Java governor Ridwan Kamil ended after a police‑run DNA test concluded he was not the biological father of a child whose mother had made the claim online, clearing the way for a defamation investigation to proceed. In criminal cases, too, DNA exclusions can overturn long‑held assumptions about identity and responsibility, which is why forensic standards stress rigorous documentation and clear communication at every step.

The Emotional Cost of Scientific Certainty

Beyond legal questions, the Tangerang dispute highlights the emotional whiplash many families experience in the age of routine DNA testing. Around the world, highly publicised stories—from TV shows built around paternity tests to viral social‑media clips of shocked families—have shown how genetic evidence can both answer and upend deeply personal narratives. In Indonesia, where extended families often live close together and social cohesion is strong, the public announcement that a relative is “definitely” dead or “certainly” related carries immense weight—and, when walked back, can leave deep mistrust in its wake.

Psychologists who work with families of the missing describe a distinct form of trauma associated with uncertain loss. Research on “ambiguous loss” shows that when a loved one is neither clearly alive nor definitively dead, relatives can struggle for years with unresolved grief, anxiety, and tension inside the household. In the Tangerang case, the family briefly moved from ambiguity to apparent certainty—then back again, following the non‑identical DNA result, making their psychological burden even heavier.

Calls for Clearer Protocols and Better Communication

Human‑rights and victim‑support groups in Indonesia have long urged the police to adopt clearer, nationally standardised rules for notifying families in missing‑person and unidentified‑body cases, including a requirement that formal death notifications only occur after scientific confirmation where DNA testing is available. They argue that while investigative urgency is real—bodies must be buried, morgue space is limited—it should not come at the expense of accuracy or compassion in dealing with relatives.

Best‑practice guidelines from international forensic organizations recommend using a combination of methods—dental records, fingerprints, distinctive medical features, and DNA—to avoid misidentification, particularly in contexts where documentation is poor or families are hard to reach. They also stress the importance of assigning trained liaison officers to keep families informed in plain language about what has and has not been confirmed at each stage.

An Open Case and an Unfinished Story

As of now, the whereabouts of the missing Tangerang father remain unknown, and the police are under pressure to explain how and why his family was led to believe he had been found among the dead. The non‑identical DNA result has spared them from burying the wrong man—but it has left them with no body, no answers, and a renewed search that may stretch on indefinitely.

For a growing number of Indonesian families, this is the paradox of modern forensic science: DNA can conclusively prove that someone is not who authorities thought they were. What it cannot do—at least not yet—is tell them where their loved one has gone, or when their wait for certainty will finally end.