Today, the Khoroshevsky Court of Moscow city started to examine a criminal case with regard to former officers of Patrol and Inspection Service with the Department of the Interior for the Strogino District Aleksey Tkachuk who is charged with the battery of 17-year old Artem Bulokhov. Lawyers with the Committee Against Torture represent the interests of the victim.   

Bulokhov applied to the CAT in October 2021. He told human rights defenders that shortly before that he and his friend were walking pass the Stroginsky Park to a record studio to record some music. A police vehicle with four Patrol and Inspection officers stopped nearby. The police officers rudely demanded that the teenagers stopped. Bulokhov got scared and ran.    

“Aleksey Tkachuk caught up with me and pushed me on the ground, having turned me about on my back in such a manner that I could not resist, and hit me five times in the area of my cheek-bone and nose, due to that I passed out for some time. When I came to my senses, Tkachuk hit me two or three times, again”, Artem pointed out in his report.

Only after that, one of the police officers showed his ID and said that a counter-drugs raid was underway and that Bulokhov was allegedly involved in illegal trafficking of banned substances. According to Artem, the police officers examined him and his friend without any attesting witnesses and without drawing up a report, they also checked their messages and photos of the mobile phones. No drugs were found.   

Then, according to Artem, the police officers started to demand money from him, threatening to plant mephedrone on him. Then Tkachuk realized that he attended the same school as Bulokhov, and the teenagers were released.    

Bulokhov returned home and in the morning of the next day applied to the first aid station, after that he was hospitalized. The teenager was diagnosed with extravasations on his face (in the area of a temple, lower lid and a cheek-bone) closed fracture of nose bones, brain concussion with short-term loss of consciousness. Later on, forensic medical examination categorized the damage inflicted to the teenager’s health as mild.

Soon after the incident, the Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee for the North-West Administrative District of Moscow initiated a criminal case against Tkachuk on abuse of office using violence (item “a” of Part 3, Article 286 of the Criminal Code).  He was fired from law-enforcement. Now he is under the house arrest.

 — The materials with regard to three police officers who saw a teenager being beaten and did not stop their colleague, were severed. Now we are waiting for some evaluation of their actions from the investigative authorities with regard to abuse of office, — lawyer Peter Khromov comments. — The investigation authorities did not delay the investigation, it gathered the evidence pretty quickly and thoroughly.