Bayu Marhaenjati – Jakarta Police denied on Thursday intimidating an alleged rape victim, while the woman's lawyer claimed she was urged by police to withdraw the accusation.

"Our investigators did not intimidate the witness during the investigation process," Jakarta Police' spokesman Sr. Comr. Rikwanto said on Thursday.

The woman, whom police identified by her initials and said worked in broadcast journalism, filed a complaint saying she was punched in the face and assaulted by an unknown assailant on June 20.

"The rape happened, but the victim was urged to admit that the rape did not happen," Tommy Albert Tobing, the victim's lawyer, told Indonesian news portal Detik.com.

Rikwanto said the investigators had followed procedure to the letter while investigating the case, which included asking the witness to undergo a lie-detector test.

"Maybe she felt like she was being pressured into admitting the rape did not happen, but actually that's not the case, our investigators were only trying to discover facts," he said.

The woman's lawyer said police had been more preoccupied with briefing the media about aspects of her private life and emphasizing the absence of semen on her clothes than focusing on finding the perpetrator. She claimed the suspect was in his late teens and wearing black.

Police earlier said that their examination of the complainant found a heavy bruise on her cheek and mud on her clothes. Those findings would seem to be consistent with M.C.'s police report that she was punched in the head by her assailant before being pushed to the ground, dragged into the alley and sexually assaulted.

"The police is not solving the case," Tommy said. "Instead they revealed the victim's private life to the public."