Today, on 25 May 2016, judge of the Perevolotsky District Court of the Orenburg region Tamara Charikova pronounced a sentence of senior district police officer of the Department of Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Perevolotsky District Anatoly Lagayev. He is declared guilty of committing the crime under «a, b, c» of Part 3 of Article 286 of the Russian Criminal Code (abuse of office with the use of violence and special equipment causing grave consequences) and sentenced to three years of prison term, serving the sentence in a standard regime penal colony. The convict was taken into custody in the court room.
(Convict Anatoliy Lagayev is taken into custody)
As we have previously reported, on 4 September 2013 Andrey Bishev applied to Orenburg branch of INGO «The Committee Against Torture» for legal assistance. According to the applicant, on 21 August 2013 he was at home, and in the evening had a quarrel with his mother. She called the district police officer to calm her son down, for he had repeatedly started domestic brawls before.
The police arrived quickly. As Mr Bishev states, the district police officer police major Anatoliy Lagayev came with a colleague of his from a neighboring village. They took the brawler into their car and drove outside the village. After a short ride they arrived to a grain storage. There the policemen ordered Andrey to get out of the car, knocked him down and began beating him with a truncheon. Andrey remembers that the battery went with lecturing, such as «everyone is sick and tired of your behavior».
The «awareness session» lasted for several minutes until Andrey threw up with blood. The policemen gave the man a cloth for him not to stain the car, and threw him into the trunk. Then the officers came back to the village to question Andrey’s neighbors concerning the quarrel with his mother. According to Bishev, only after that the policemen took the man to Perevolotsk District Department of the Interior of Orenburg region, where he kicked Andrey again in the chest area, because Andrey refused to sign the documents needed for drawing up a report on administrative violation.
According to the victim, he was left alone for almost 24 hours in a cell of the police department temporary detention facility. Before taking Bishev to the cell the police officers took him for medical examination, but the doctors did not see any grounds for taking him to hospital. Thus, Bishev remained without medical assistance till the evening of next day. Only late in the evening of August 22 a duty officer called emergency ambulance for Bishev. Andrey was urgently admitted into Perevolotsk district hospital.
The victim was diagnosed with numerous hematomas, skin abrasions, and internal bleeding with rupture of internal organs. He underwent a complicated surgery that lasted several hours. The situation was so difficult that local surgeons had to ask specialist from Orenburg for help. Only with their joint efforts the doctors managed to save Andrey’s life. However, his condition remained critical for some time afterwards.
As early as on 25 August 2013 investigative authorities opened a criminal case. However, for almost a year various versions were investigated (battery of Andrey by the neighbor teenagers, battery of Andrey by his mother with a rolling pin, injuries made by a neighbor’s bull), except the one which Bishev himself stated – a battery by the policemen.
Due to that human rights defenders representing the interests of Andrey Bishev, applied to the head of the Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of the Orenburg region Sergey Kolotov requesting to transfer this case to the first department for major cases investigation of the Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of the Orenburg region. Investigator of this department Vladimir Lebedev, having gathered the evidence which exposed neighborhood police inspector Lagayev, on 10 November 2014 charged him with crime under items «a,b,c» of part 3 of Article 286 of the Russian Criminal Code (abuse of office with the use of violence and special equipment).
Only on the third try the Prosecutor’s Office of the Perevolotsky District approved the indictment in relation to district police officer Anatoly Lagayev, returning the case to the investigator in order to eliminate the violations. Finally, in September of last year the case was taken to court.
For eight months of judicial proceedings a colossal work was done: over thirty witnesses were questioned, seven volumes of criminal case were examined, and numerous forensics were studied. As we have previously reported, State Prosecutor Natalya Milyaeva requested to sentence the defendant to five and half years of prison term, serving the sentence in a standard regime penal colony.
Today judge of the Perevolotskiy District Court Tamara Charikova pronounced a guilty verdict for senior police investigator of the Department of the Ministry of Interior for the Orenburg region Anatoliy Lagayev and sentenced him to three years of prison term. Lagayev is also debarred from holding public offices for three years.
«It was rather a challenging task for the court, but not even from the point of view of legal complexity of the case in question, but in its somewhat ethical component. On the one hand – victim Andrey Bishev, who proved himself negatively: he stole a bag of flour from his neighbors, he also stole some money from his mother’s purse. On the other hand there is district police officer Anatoliy Lagayev, the specimen of «strong hand» and the lawman in Karinovka village, who kept protecting his fellow home folk over and over again against the pranks of the victim, and who punished the hooligan as «it served him right long time ago», in the opinion of many Kalinovka dwellers. However, the court justly decided that the representative of state cannot himself violate the law even when he represses a crime, being the prosecutor, the judge and the executioner all in one, – lawyer of the Committee for Prevention of Torture Albina Mudarisova, representing the interests of Andrey Bishev, comments on today’s verdict. – After the verdict enters into legal force we will apply to court with a suit claiming a compensation of damage inflicted by criminal actions of the district police officer».