Butyrsky District Court of the capital began consideration on the merits of the criminal case of Mikhail Khachaturian, who died at the hands of his own daughters. The proceedings were initiated by the relatives of the deceased, who were convinced that the man’s accusations of sexual violence and regular torture of his children were groundless. On Friday, Mikhail Khachaturian’s lawyers shocked the court and their procedural opponents by demanding that the case be returned in order to toughen the charges brought against the deceased in absentia. They explained this by alleged inconsistencies in the indictment, but the court refused them. Representatives of the Khachaturian sisters are confident that during the proceedings their version of the girls’ actions in the conditions of necessary defense in protecting life and health from domestic violence will only be confirmed.
The first meeting of the “troika” of judges of the Butyrsky District Court on the “posthumous” case of Mikhail Khachaturyan took about two and a half hours and fully met the expectations of the parties. The process takes place behind closed doors due to the details of private life, medical diagnoses and other intimate details in the case. As it became known to Kommersant, at first the representative of the prosecutor’s office read out the indictment against Mikhail Khachaturyan, who, after his death, was charged with sexual assault, distribution of pornography and causing grievous bodily harm (Articles 132, 242 and 111 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).
Recall that initially the initiation of the case was denied due to the death of the alleged culprit. But some relatives of the deceased have achieved an investigation and trial.
Thus, they want to rehabilitate Mikhail Khachaturian and knock out the main trump card from the protection of his daughters Krestina, Angelina and Maria, who insists that the girls were driven to despair by violence from their father and acted in conditions of necessary defense. The latter circumstance, according to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, exempts from criminal liability.
The initiation of a criminal case against Khachaturian became the reason for the return of the case of the girls themselves for additional investigation, which has already been sent to the courts for consideration on the merits. At the same time, according to Kommersant, recently First Deputy Prosecutor General Anatoly Razinkin insisted on toughening the charges in the case of the deceased, in particular, due to the fact that minors were subjected to sexual violence, and pornographic videos were sent to a classmate of one of his daughters.
After the announcement of the version of the prosecution, Mikhail Khachaturian’s defense asked the court to return the materials of the criminal case to the prosecutor’s office in order to eliminate the violations of the Code of Criminal Procedure committed during the preparation of the indictment under Art. 237 Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation.
“The conclusion does not meet the norms of the law and does not correspond to the circumstances of the incident,” one of the lawyers of the late Georgy Chuguashvili explained to Kommersant. According to him, in particular, the conclusion does not reflect the time and methods of committing crimes, and in this case the defense cannot provide an alibi, noting that these circumstances should be established by the investigation, and not by the court.
However, the real sensation was the second petition of the lawyers of the deceased, which concerned the return of the case, but on the grounds of toughening the charge. “It was so unexpected that the court even doubted whether he had heard wrong,” one of the participants in the process told Kommersant. However, Mikhail Khachaturian’s lawyers explained to Kommersant that this was indeed a planned action. And the reason was the qualification of the deeds of the deceased in relation to his daughters, when in some cases they entailed grave consequences, but not in others.
However, the court refused to return the materials to the supervisory agency on all these grounds, scheduling the next hearing for mid-May.
“We will look at how the process will go, we will try once again to achieve the return of the case, in which there are many miscalculations of the investigation, and then, perhaps, we will demand the removal of the court,” Mr. Chuguashvili explained to Kommersant, noting that out of the three professional judges , on which he and his colleagues insisted, only the chairman specializes in criminal trials, and the other two in civil cases. According to his estimates, the consideration of the case, if he is not returned to the prosecutor’s office, will not end before the New Year. In particular, because it contains about 40 volumes of materials and about 30 witnesses for the prosecution alone.
The defense intends to thoroughly interrogate eyewitnesses to the death of Mikhail Khachaturian, for example, doctors who arrived at the scene of the tragedy of an ambulance, as well as psychiatrists who conducted examinations of the condition of the sisters. “We will insist on their appearance, there can be no talk of reading out their affidavits!” — categorically stated the lawyers of the deceased.
Meanwhile, the lawyer of one of the Khachaturian sisters, Aleksey Parshin, told Kommersant that he was quite satisfied with the way the process was going, the correct behavior of the parties, etc. “We were only for holding the trial, since the girls were recognized as victims, they should receive the necessary satisfaction” – said Mr. Parshin. He is convinced that the process will confirm the father’s wrongful acts towards his own children. And this, in turn, will become the basis for the termination of the criminal prosecution of the girls, fixed by the court decision. So far, the lawyers do not intend to invite them to court, at least until the necessary testimony as victims, which, most likely, will happen at the end of the process.
