"Dead, you are arrested"

The story of the accused under the 228 article, which for six months was in jail with oncology, and then proved to the state that she was generally alive

Kristina Balcheva-34, but because of strong thinness it looks 10 years younger. The woman stands, leaning on crutches, the right leg does not extend after the operation. In the dark hair of Christina, braided in two thin braids, gray threads are noticeable. Behind Christina’s shoulders of opiate dependence, a criminal case under the 228th article, a diagnosis-cancer, six months in the female pre-trial detention center-6 in printers, where she was treated for terrible pain with paracetamol tablets and did not send for examination.

The story began in 2009, when, quarreling with a mother, who did not want to put up with her dependence, Christina left her house in Sergiev Posad. Some time later, the mother filed an application for the search, and then went to court, who recognized the girl missing. According to Russian legislation, a person who is absent for five years can be recognized by the court of the deceased. But this is not an automatic process: it requires submitting an application and holding a court session. In the case of Christina, the system failed.

In 2015, she accidentally found out that, according to official figures, she was already dead:

- Police officers invited me to the department to certify my identity, since I had no documents with me. The policeman drove my data into the computer, returned pale all and says: “Who are you at all? Why do you call us other people's data? " - I say: - How, strangers? Balcheva Kristina Mikhailovna is me. - "Kristina Balcheva died in 2014."

The police treated her loyally and even offered their help in restoring documents, but alas. Kristina forgot a passport a year ago in a taxi, but did not apply for new documents, since she did not work officially and did not feel in this acute need. This continued before her arrest.

In April 2018, the operatives detained at the entrance of one of the Moscow houses and seized a large -scale bundle with her heroin:

- My friend and I went to his apartment to use heroin together. The bag with the substance lay in his pocket, but I had nothing with me at all, the girl says. - When the operatives detained us, they already had a bag with heroin in advance to put it in case we have nothing to do with us. They put this package into my friend’s pocket, and they shifted it to close me exactly.

The investigator voiced us two options: either we agree that our substance, we give confession and go according to the 228th article (acquisition and storage), or we will unlock, and we are made part of the first article 228 (sales).

We, two idiots, agreed to recognition. And six months later, we will find out that the case was retrained for the part of the first article 228.

According to investigators, we were engaged in the distribution of drugs as part of a criminal group: its organizer - another of my acquaintances - has not yet been caught. When I saw the materials of the criminal case, I screamed and cried, for which the investigator said to me: "Nothing, you will make excuses in court."

According to the criminal article, which the girl is incriminated now (part 4 of article 228.1 - “Sales of narcotic substances in an organized group”) faces 10 to 20 years in prison. By a court decision, an officially “dead” Balchev was sent to pre -trial detention center No. 6. In prison, Christina’s health began to deteriorate sharply.

From the complaint of Kristina Balycheva to the Moscow PPC of 11/27/2018
“The neurologist held a consultation and wrote to me vitamins. At the expense of the droppers, she said that here is not a hospital <...>. She also prescribed crutches and a shield for the bed, but SIZO No. 6 does not have these things. So the spine and back continue to get very sick, and the legs are periodically sharply taken away. Therefore, I move exclusively with extraneous help, since at any moment I can fall. <...>

Anesthetic drugs are issued from time to time as lucky. From pain, I constantly suffer, I endure as I can, but, frankly, I can’t stand it anymore. There is a huge problem with the issuance of drugs for its intended purpose, and even more so on statements. Today 09.24.18 I was given two paracetamol tablets. What to call it, I do not know. Recently, as usual, they did not give painkillers for the weekend, I had to call the doctor on duty at night, somehow lived until Monday and, when I was on the dressing, asked me to make an anesthetic injection, but they rudely refused me. At the same moment, I could not stand it, broke, began to scream and cry for the whole medical part. At that moment, an employee of the UFSIN D.A. was a check there, and so that he did not hear anything, and I did not see him and did not complain, they quickly made an injection and took me into the camera. ”

“ The stomach began to hurt back in August,” Christina recalls. -

There was no gynecologist in jail, of course, and no one could make a diagnosis. From pain in the bottom of the abdomen, I rushed and shook, I yelled with a good obscenity to their whole prison.

When my bleeding began, I still finished them off, and the investigator took me into a temporary detention center for 10 days. Unlike a prison where an ambulance will never be called in her life, she arrives in IVS for 5 minutes. In the 20th hospital in Medvedkovo, I was cleaned, and then the results of the tests came, and I learned about my diagnosis-cancer.

They refused to keep me with this diagnosis in the pre -trial detention center, so the investigator was confronted with the fact, I only asked a friend to write the paper that I would live with him. On December 20, the diagnosis was voiced to me, and before the New Year the court freed me. This happened quickly enough, but why was there so much time to pull with a direction for examination and causing me so much suffering, because it was about my health and, possibly, life?

... At the beginning of 2019, Christina was free, but without a passport and a policy, and therefore, and without the opportunity to begin treatment in a state clinic. Even from the pre-trial detention center, she wrote to the Sergius-Posad court a statement that she was recognized as dead by mistake and asked to restore herself in rights. The court replied that there were no cases of recognition of Christina Balcheva who died in their production.

At large, the woman and her lawyer Timur Madatov continued to throw the Sergiev Posad court with statements, to which they either responded with similar subscriptions or simply ignored. It would seem that it is not so much a big thing - to take and get to Sergiev Posad personally, but not for a person who is seriously ill and already with difficulty walking, but she could not write out a power of attorney to a lawyer - there was no passport.

The disease progressed, the pain did not go anywhere. Once a day, the girl had to call an ambulance, which made her injection of a tramadol, but refused to hospitalize.

Suddenly the Sergiev Posad court woke up. He appointed the meeting in the case of Christina on May 30. Judge Sergeyev, who listened to her case, was benevolently and even offered to transfer the meeting from the 3rd floor to the 1st, when she found out how hard it was Christine to walk.

“She was very surprised when she found out that her colleague chose a preventive measure on the basis of only certificates No. 1P with my photo for a passport, although, looking at her and at me, it is difficult to make sure that this is the same person,” recalls Christina. - Sergeeva said that the court did not hold a meeting to recognize me as the deceased. She said that, apparently, they had some kind of failure in the system, because of which the police bases made his way that I had already died and that the death certificate was issued. In order to confirm that Balcheva is me, it turned out to be sufficient to deliver a witness (my grandfather) to the court and bring a visualoscopy from the pre -trial detention center.

In a few hours, the court restored Kristina in the rights, and after the beginning of next week she was successfully operated on. The prosecutor’s office sent her criminal case for the investigation: according to the girl, the case is falling apart, and she hopes that she will be able to achieve re -qualification of the prosecution to another article.

... No matter how tough these words are addressed to the person who is under investigation and is sick with cancer, Christina can still consider that she was lucky: according to statistics, a quarter of prisoners in Russian prisons, who sent a request for release in connection with the disease, simply die without waiting for a court decision.

Anna Karetnikova

Ex-member of the Moscow PMC, leading analyst of the Federal Penitentiary Service in the city of Moscow

- Recently, I can recall several cases resembling Christina's story. Recently there was a story with an oncologically ill prisoner Ekaterina Gavrilova, whom the investigator refused to act, despite her extremely serious condition. Nyuta Federmeser intervened in this situation, and the woman was transferred to the hospice. I think this is the first case in our country, when the guard stood in the hospice. Two weeks later, Gavrilova died. I note that all the time until she was hospitalized, the woman experienced hellish pain.

In general, recently, the FSIN position softened: before oncological patients they freed only when they began metastases. And if metastases began, then it is too late to help a person. In fact, a person was released simply so that he was not with them, but died at large.