REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA -- The police will wait for the results of the laboratory test conducted by the Food and Drug Agency (BPOM) in the case of the distribution of "plastic" rice, National Police Chief General Badroddin Haiti said.

"Investigation will wait for the results of the BPOM test," he stated after attending the ceremonial groundbreaking of the construction of the "Indonesia Satu" Building here on Saturday (24/5).

If the case is confirmed, he added, the police will probe where the rice originated from.

"If it is confirmed, we will investigate and find out where it came from, whether it was from home or abroad," Haiti affirmed, adding that the Jakarta police has already questioned several witnesses over the case.

It was earlier reported that the police sector in Bantargebang shuttered a shop in Mutiara Gading Market in Mustikajaya, Bekasi, West Java, on Tuesday for selling rice suspected to have been made of synthetic materials.

"We have also secured the trader named Sembiring and four of his employees to be questioned as witnesses," Chief of the Bantargebang Police Sector Commissioner Gatot Suyanto said in Bekasi, West Java, on Tuesday.

He added that the discovery was made following a report from a resident and from social media platforms Facebook and Instagram.

After suspecting that the rice had been contaminated with synthetic materials, Suyanto conducted an inspection in Mutiara Gading Market.

"We took several bags of rice as samples for a laboratory test," he noted.

Sembiring, the trader, confessed that he received the rice from a distributor in Karawang, West Java, and sold it to consumers at Rp18,000 per kilogram.

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