The Committee against Torture is going to lodge a supervisory appeal against the Nizhny Novgorod regional court’s decision under the case of pensioners Rakhmanovs.

   Yesterday the Nizhny Novgorod regional court tried the cassation appeal against the Kstovo city court ruling rejecting the complaint of the Committee against Torture.  Lawyers of the Committee appealed against the refusal to start criminal proceedings against police officers who had searched the Kstovo pensioners’ flat.

Earlier Irina Ivanovna Rakhmanova and her husband – 70-year old Alexander Alexandrovich Rakhmanov, disabled of II-degree – applied to the Committee against Torture claiming that both of them had been beaten up while the police had been searching their flat. The materials of the public investigation carried out by the CAT witness that the police violated the Rakhmanovs’ rights.

Later Irina Rakhmanova was convicted for “violent treatment of state agents”.

The investigation authorities where the old lady had also applied for help refused to investigate the incident. The CAT appealed against the refusal, but the Kstovo court dismissed the appeal. The regional court upheld the decision of the first instance court saying that the circumstances of the battery had been considered while trying the case against Irina Rakhmanova. The court believes that since the verdict against Mrs. Rakhmanova has entered into force, neither she nor her husband could be subject to police abuse.  According to the court, in this situation all evidence proving the fact of the battery is null and void.  Thus, the court basically approves of police abuse if its victim is convicted.