Today the Orenburg regional court upheld the verdict of the court of first instance in relation to Senior Police Commissioner Anatoly Lagayev who was found guilty of cruel beating of Andrey Bishev, the citizen of Karinovka village. We remind you that in the course of the investigation numerous versions of Bishev’s beating were considered: he fell off the bike, was beaten up by the neighboring teenagers, his mother beat him up with a rolling pin, his injuries were made by a neighbor’s bull … However, the court found Anatoly Lagayev guilty. Today the verdict has come into force.
(Anatoly Lagayev, video communication from the detention facility)
As we have previously reported, on 4 September 2013 Andrey Bishev applied to the 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 Anatoly 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 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». When the «awareness session» was over, they threw him into the trunk not to stain the car. The officers came back to the village to question Andrey’s neighbors concerning the quarrel with his mother. After that, according to Mr Bishev, the policemen took him to Perevolotsk District Department of the Interior of Orenburg region in the trunk of the car, 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 brought 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 man was diagnosed with numerous hematomas, skin abrasions, and internal bleeding with rupture of internal organs. He underwent a complicated surgery which lasted several hours. The situation was so difficult that local surgeons had to ask specialists from the regional center for help. Only with their joint efforts the doctors managed to save Andrey Bishev. 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, except the one which Bishev himself stated – a battery by the policemen. The versions were the following: Bishev fell off the bike, battery of Andrey by the neighbor teenagers, battery of Andrey by his mother with a rolling pin, injuries made by a neighbor’s bull…
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 evidence exposing 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).
The Prosecutor’s Office of Perevolotsk district affirmed the conviction related to case against Senior Police Commissioner Anatoly Lagayev only on the third try, previously the case had been returned to the investigator to eliminate violations. At last, in September last year the case was sent to trial. The court proceedings took eight months; over thirty witnesses were interrogated, seven volumes of the criminal case were examined, numerous export reports were studied.
On 25 May this year judge of Perevolotsk district court of Orenburg region Tamara Charikova delivered a verdict relating to Anatoly Lagayev, Senior Police Commissioner of the Department of Interior for Perevolotsk District. He was found guilty of committing the alleged crime and sentenced to three years of prison term in standard regime penal colony. The convict was taken into custody at the court room.
Lagayev did not agree with the verdict and submitted an appeal to the Orenburg regional court.
Today the court upheld the verdict of the Perevolotsk district court of the Orenburg region and did not satisfy the appeal of the convict.
“Andrey Bishev is a controversial character in this story. On the one hand, he is a brawler and a boozer who had managed to annoy his home-folk to the point of the extreme anger with his antisocial behavior. On the other hand, the victim who stole seven hundred rubles from his mother’s purse might have lost his life due to this fact because the policeman considered himself a judge. The guilty verdict of the court of first instance and acknowledging it legal by the judicial board of the regional court is quite important not only for the victim, but for the policemen, as well, – comments Albina Mudarisova, the lawyer of the Committee for the Prevention of Torture representing the interests of Mr Bishev. – I hope this verdict will be a serious warning for the representatives of authority against committing crimes in public office. The next step we are planning to undertake on our way of restoring the rights of the victim is filing a compensation claim for the moral damage.”