The Supreme Court of Dagestan overturned the guilty verdict and released from punishment Ministry of Internal Affairs pensioner Tagir Velagaev in the case of the murder of his ex-wife (Article 107 of the Criminal Code). This is reported by «Axiom».
The defendant agreed to dismiss the case on non-rehabilitating grounds — in connection with the expiration of the statute of limitations for criminal liability, the human rights project clarifies.
In February 2019, 46-year-old Velagaev killed his 48-year-old ex-wife, Umuzhat Huseynova. The former policeman inflicted four blows on her head with the handle of a traumatic pistol and strangled her, and then wrapped the corpse in a carpet. Huseynova's body was discovered 12 days later, when the neighbors felt an unpleasant smell in the entrance.
A body in a carpet. In Dagestan, a former policeman confessed to the murder of his wife, but remained at large
Velagaev wrote a confession only after his arrest. The ex-policeman claimed that on the day of the murder, Huseynova insulted his daughters from another marriage and wished them to become «prostitutes.»
During interrogation, Velagaev said that he did not remember how he strangled a woman. According to the son of the murdered woman, the ex-husband often «came to her drunk, broke the front doors.» Initially, the case was investigated under the article on murder (105 of the Criminal Code), but then it was reclassified as an article on murder committed in a state of passion (107 of the Criminal Code).
The Soviet District Court of Makhachkala twice sentenced Velagaev to restriction of freedom for a period of two years, however, the Supreme Court of Dagestan canceled the decisions and sent the case for a new trial. The lawyer of the injured party, Arsen Shabanov, insisted on presenting the former policeman with a more serious article of the Criminal Code.
In the spring of 2022, the Supreme Court of the republic reduced Velagaev’s sentence to 1 year and 9 months, considering the surrender as a mitigating circumstance, and freed the pensioner of the Ministry of Internal Affairs from punishment due to the expiration of the statute of limitations for prosecution.
In September, the Fifth Court of Cassation of General Jurisdiction overturned the decision to release, after which the case for the third time went to the Supreme Court of Dagestan, which eventually dropped the charges against Velagaev.