Deepfake Sexual Abuse and Digital Evidence under Indonesia’s New Criminal Procedure Code
Keywords:
Deepfake, Digital Evidence, Electronic Evidence, New KUHAP, Sexual Violence.Abstract
This article examines the evidentiary consequences of synthetic sexual imagery in Indonesian criminal procedure after the enactment of Law No. 20 of 2025 on the Criminal Procedure Code. It uses doctrinal and case-based analysis centered on Semarang District Court Decision No. 12/Pid.Sus/2026/PN Smg and, as a pre-deepfake comparator, Bojonegoro District Court Decision No. 125/Pid.Sus/2019/PN Bjn. The study integrates Article 235 of the new KUHAP, Article 5 of the Electronic Information and Transactions Law, the Sexual Violence Crime Law, the Pornography Law, and relevant constitutional jurisprudence. The findings distinguish legal admissibility from forensic reliability. Electronic files may qualify as evidence, yet synthetic media creates a separate authentication problem involving provenance, device linkage, metadata, hashing, generation history, and chain of custody. The new KUHAP’s express recognition of electronic evidence and its authenticity requirement provides a stronger procedural basis for scrutinizing manipulated content, but statutory recognition does not by itself establish authorship or integrity. The article proposes an evidence matrix for courts that separates content identification, source attribution, technical authenticity, lawful acquisition, and victim-centered proof.
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