Petitioners Refine Challenge to Criminal Law Procedure Code on Pretrial Applicants

Petitioner and legal counsel, Irpan Suriadiata, delivering the main points of the revised petition on the judicial review of the Criminal Law Procedures Code on Tuesday (10/3) Photo by MKRI/IlhamWM.

Jakarta (MKRI) - Nine lawyers and one law student submitted a revised petition for judicial review of Article 158 letter e of Law No. 20 of 2025 on the Criminal Law Procedures Code (KUHAP) to the Constitutional Court (MK) on Tuesday, March 10, 2026. The Petitioners argued that Article 158 letter e does not clearly specify which legal subjects are entitled to file a pretrial application in cases where law enforcement officers delay or fail to pursue a case.

“The absence of a defined pretrial applicant in the challenged norm has caused concrete constitutional harm,” said Irpan Suriadiata, principal Petitioner and counsel for the Petitioners, in the courtroom in Jakarta.

The Petitioners contended that their constitutional loss is not abstract or hypothetical but an actual constitutional injury, as they have lost legal access to challenge potentially unlawful actions by law enforcement, particularly unjustified delays or halts in case handling without a valid legal basis. This loss of access, they maintained, directly conflicts with their constitutional right to fair legal certainty as guaranteed by Article 28D paragraph (1) of the 1945 Constitution.

In the Petitioners’ view, a normative gap has arisen, creating legal uncertainty. In practice, investigators may remain passive or delay legal processes, yet no party with a direct interest has an expressly recognized right under the KUHAP to contest such passivity, and the public as victims loses access to judicial oversight mechanisms.

The pretrial object at issue is intended as a control mechanism over an investigator’s stance or actions in not proceeding with an inquiry, investigation, or examination against a person, which directly implicates citizens’ constitutional right to fair legal certainty under Article 28D paragraph (1) of the 1945 Constitution.

The Petitioners noted that, in Indonesian law enforcement practice, delays in case handling are frequent and widely known. Yet people who feel discriminated against by such delays have no access or right to seek, through pretrial proceedings, a legal order requiring investigators to resume handling their stalled cases and promptly designate them as suspects.

In their revised petitum, the Petitioners ask the Court to declare Article 158 letter e of the KUHAP unconstitutional insofar as it is not interpreted to mean that pretrial applications challenging delays in case handling without lawful reason may be filed by parties with a legal interest in the case, including suspects or their families, victims or their families, complainants, advocates or legal aid providers authorized to represent the legal interests of suspects or victims, and other parties whose constitutional rights are impaired by such delays.

In addition to Irpan Suriadiata, the lawyer-Petitioners are Habiburrahman, Titi Tantri, Abdul Majid, Lalu Muhamad Rizal, Lalu M. Kazwaini, M. Iskandar, Ida Husna, and Ahmad Muzakkir, along with student M. Nova Taupik Saputra. The case was heard by a Panel of Justices chaired by Justice Enny Nurbaningsih, with Justices Anwar Usman and Arsul Sani sitting alongside.

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Petitioners Refine Challenge to Criminal Law Procedure Code on Pretrial Applicants