The investigation requested compulsory treatment for a St. Petersburg resident because of an anecdote on VKontakte

In St. Petersburg, the investigation asked that Eduard Nikitin, a disabled person of the second group, be sent for compulsory treatment, accused of inciting hatred or enmity because of a joke on VKontakte. This is reported by Interfax.

In the Nevsky District Court of St. Petersburg, the consideration of the case began behind closed doors.

The case against Nikitin under Article 282 of the Criminal Code was initiated in 2017. The reason was a caricature and an anecdote that he posted on his page on VKontakte in 2015.

“He underwent a psychiatric examination, and the investigation is asking not to be held criminally liable, but to be sent for compulsory treatment,” the defendant’s lawyer Maxim Kamakin explained to the agency.

The examination revealed extremism in a joke, one of the characters of which doubts positive changes after the elections, as well as in a cartoon with the word “quilted jacket”.

“For the first time I hear that such cases are initiated for an anecdote, albeit not the most decent and political,” the lawyer added.

Nikitin said that in 2016 he was summoned to the investigator for a check, after which the investigation did not contact him for more than a year. At the end of 2017, the man was handed a notice of initiation of a criminal case.

UPD On August 21, the Nevsky District Court rejected the petition of Nikitin's lawyer Maxim Kamakin to recognize the examination of posts on the social network as inadmissible evidence. It is reported by Zaks.ru.

Earlier, Candidate of Sciences Reseda Salakhutdinova and an expert of the Investigative Committee Elena Kiryukhina recognized the doubts of the character of the joke about positive changes after the elections as extremism. According to Kamakin, the experts made their own conjectures in the conclusion, violated the logic and incorrectly executed the document.