Evidence for
Kanjuruhan Stadium: The Tear-Gas Deployment, Crowd Crush, and Criminal Liability After the Match

Companion notes

Kanjuruhan Stadium Disaster and the Investigation into Crowd Crush, Tear Gas, and Criminal Liability

The public record establishes that a fatal crowd crush followed the Arema FC–Persebaya Surabaya match at Kanjuruhan Stadium on 1 October 2022, after police deployed tear gas during the disorder. It documents 135 deaths, 583 injuries, six announced suspects, forensic examinations, trials, and Supreme Court sentences for two officers. Those proceedings assessed the conduct of particular defendants; they did not produce a single adjudicated account assigning one actor sole responsibility for every death.

The Paper Trail & Official Records

The documentary record begins with contemporaneous reporting and reference summaries that place the disaster at Kanjuruhan Stadium in Malang Regency immediately after the match ended on 1 October 2022. Reporting described the arena as the scene of a crowd crush, with police deploying tear gas during the disorder and spectators attempting to escape through crowded exits. Coverage from Kompas.com also noted that Persebaya Surabaya players were evacuated using tactical vehicles, underscoring how quickly the situation shifted from a football match to a large-scale security emergency. These sources anchor the basic incident sequence in public view. [S1], [S2]

Later records broadened the paper trail from news coverage into formal process. Wikipedia’s incident chronology and CNN Indonesia’s court reporting both describe the opening of criminal proceedings, including the first trial held on 16 January 2023 in Surabaya. The same broad record also notes that police announced six suspects on 6 October 2022, which is procedurally significant because it shows the state’s early decision to treat the disaster not as an accident alone but as a matter of possible criminal liability. The public record therefore contains both emergency reporting and the first steps of adjudication. [S1], [S4]

Forensic Chronology & Turning Points

The chronology documented in Kompas TV and BBC News Indonesia is especially important because it moves the case from stadium disorder to verifiable post-incident actions. By 2 October, families were arriving at RSUD Kanjuruhan, hospital staff were treating casualties, and the atmosphere was one of urgent identification and triage. On 5 November 2022, an independent forensic team completed autopsies on two exhumed victims, identified by BBC News Indonesia as Natasya Debi Ramadani and Naila Debi Anggraini. That step is a major evidentiary turning point because it confirms that the inquiry did not rely only on witness recollection. [S3], [S5]

The casualty figures also changed the legal and moral frame of the event. The consolidated public record cited here reports 135 dead and 583 injured, while earlier television coverage had relayed a lower interim toll of 127 dead and 180 injured. That discrepancy matters procedurally: it shows the difference between emergency estimates and later compiled counts. In parallel, the suspect announcement of 6 October 2022 marked the point at which the police and prosecutorial machinery began assigning individual responsibility, including to stadium and security officials whose roles became central in later hearings. [S1], [S5], [S3]

Evidentiary Boundaries & Negative Findings

The sources establish that police used tear gas and that the crowd crush was fatal, but they do not support a simplistic single-cause narrative for every death. The public record does not conclusively prove that one actor alone caused all fatalities, nor does it uniformly specify the number or exact timing of each tear-gas discharge. Contemporary reporting and later forensic references instead show a contested causal field involving compression, panic, stadium movement, and security response. That distinction is essential to preserving evidentiary discipline rather than collapsing complex causes into a single explanation. [S1], [S2], [S5]

Equally important is what the record does not yet resolve. The announcement of suspects on 6 October 2022 did not itself establish guilt, and the first trial in Surabaya was only the beginning of adjudication, not its conclusion. The sources here document prosecutions, appeals, and later sentences, but they do not provide a final, universal accounting of every defendant’s conduct or of the exact mechanism of each death. For the public record, the safest formulation is that criminal liability was investigated and partially adjudicated, while some core factual and causal questions remained disputed. [S1], [S4], [S5]

Source key

The associated evidence packet contains visible source URLs, source roles and the complete claim ledger.