Indonesian villagers thought they had been blessed by an angel fallen from heaven when a beautiful doll washed up on a beach — only to discover it was an inflatable sex toy.
Rapidly spreading reports of a heavenly offering and fears of possible social unrest prompted a police investigation.
Detectives who arrived in the remote spot soon punctured the theory of divine intervention.
Photo: AFP Photo / INDONESIAN POLICE / STR
“When our officers arrived they saw that the ‘fallen angel’ was just a doll, it was a sex toy,” local police chief Heru Pramukarno said.
Villager Pardin, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, found the doll when he was fishing off the remote Banggai islands off Sulawesi in central Indonesia, police said.
The discovery in March came a day after a solar eclipse swept across the area, a deeply spiritual experience in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country. This led superstitious locals to believe the two events were linked.
Pardin took the partially inflated doll to his home in Kalupapi village, where it was treated with great reverence. His mother gave the “angel” a fresh change of clothes and new Muslim headscarf to wear every day, and pictures showed it sitting up in a chair and accompanying locals on a boat trip.
Police decided to investigate after becoming concerned the increasing excitement about the “angel” could lead to unrest.
“We were hearing many stories, such as that the ‘fallen angel’ was crying when she was discovered,” Pramukarno said.
The problem, it seemed, was the remoteness of Kalupapi.
“They have no Internet, they don’t know what a sex toy is,” Pramukarno said.
After investigating, officers confiscated the doll and took it to the local police station, a move they said was intended to stop false rumors from spreading.
It is not the first time that a sex toy has been mistaken for something else entirely.
In 2012, a Chinese TV station reported a rare mushroom with medicinal qualities had been discovered in a town during drilling for a new well, only for viewers to point out that the object was in fact a sex toy for men.
Sex toys have also sparked police alerts in the past. Several years ago police in China’s Shandong Province launched a rescue operation to save what they believed was a woman drowning in a river, only to discover it was actually an inflatable sex doll.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
CONFIDENCE BOOSTER: ’After parkour ... you dare to do a lot of things that you think only young people can do,’ a 67-year-old parkour enthusiast said In a corner of suburban Singapore, Betty Boon vaults a guardrail, crawls underneath a slide, executes forward shoulder rolls and scales a steep slope, finishing the course to applause. “Good job,” the 69-year-old’s coach cheers. This is “geriatric parkour,” where about 20 retirees learned to tackle a series of relatively demanding exercises, building their agility and enjoying a sense of camaraderie. Boon, an upbeat grandmother, said learning parkour has aided her confidence and independence as she ages. “When you’re weak, you will be dependent on someone,” she said after sweating it out with her parkour classmates in suburban Toa Payoh,
Chinese dissident artist Gao Zhen (高兟), famous for making provocative satirical sculptures of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東), was tried on Monday over accusations of “defaming national heroes and martyrs,” his wife and a rights group said. Gao, 69, who was detained in 2024 during a visit from the US, faces a maximum three-year prison sentence, said his wife, Zhao Yaliang (趙雅良), and Shane Yi, a researcher at the Chinese Human Rights Defenders group which operates outside the nation. The closed-door, one-day trial took place at Sanhe City People’s Court in Hebei Province neighboring the capital, Beijing, and ended without a
‘TOXIC CLIMATE’: ‘I don’t really recognize Labour anymore... The idea that you can implement far-right ideas in order to stop the far right is nonsense,’ a protester said Tens of thousands of people on Saturday marched through central London to protest against the far right, weeks ahead of local elections and six months after Britain saw one of its largest far-right demonstrations. Organized by hundreds of civic groups, including trade unions, anti-racism campaigners and Muslim representative bodies, Saturday’s Together Alliance event was billed as the biggest in UK history to counter right-wing extremism. A separate pro-Palestinian march had also converged with the main rally. While organizers claimed 500,000 had turned out in total, the police gave a figure of about 50,000. Protesters carrying placards with slogans such as
RSS