“We will demand more”

On November 20, the Bavlinsky District Court of Tatarstan ordered the Ministry of Finance of Russia to pay 850 thousand rubles in compensation for non-pecuniary damage to Abuzar Gafurov. The 49-year-old man was in jail for a year on charges of double murder, which he did not commit.

The initial amount of the claim was 5 million rubles. According to the lawyer Gafurov Eduard Bagautdinova, the man’s family intends to appeal the court decision. “The amount of the claim was only partially satisfied,” said RT Bagautdinov. “Five days later, the decision will be prepared, after which we will receive it and let's go to protest.”

Abuzar himself was not present at the trial. The man has a diagnosis of "oligophrenia", and during his arrest his health condition worsened. He has lost the ability to serve himself and manage his household. His relatives were forced to send Gafurov to a nursing home in early November. He already spoke with difficulty, understood almost nothing, and saw very poorly.

Recall that in 2016, on the night of April 16-17 in the village of Novye Chuti of Tatarstan, a married couple, 57-year-old Rome Mukhametgalin and 59-year-old Lyudmila Dzhuma, were brutally murdered in their house. Only on April 30 did their acquaintances accidentally discover their bodies. The corpses were badly disfigured, with multiple stab wounds. A Renault Megan car belonging to Rome and Ludmila disappeared from the site.

On April 30, police detained the mentally retarded Abuzar Gafurov as a suspect. Moreover, according to investigators, the man confessed to the murder of a couple due to a debt of two thousand rubles. According to relatives of Gafurov, law enforcement officers promised that they would release him if he signed a confession, but this did not happen.

Gafurov’s arrest aroused indignation of his relatives and neighbors. Abuzar was described as a very quiet and friendly person, he has a wife, a child and his own small household.

“At the investigative experiment, Abuzar was shown how to beat with an ax so that there would remain wounds similar to those that were found on the bodies of the dead,” said Aydar Gafurov, brother of Abuzar. “He doesn't even own an ax, he never even cut chickens.” On the ax, with which he allegedly cut them, there were no traces of the DNA of those killed. The police officers brought their witnesses, they did not take local ones. In addition, the murder was committed at night, only his brother’s eyesight is terrible, he stumbles at every step in the dark ”.

The acquaintances and relatives of the victims also indicated to the police that they had detained the wrong suspect. They called cousins ​​Vyacheslav Keksel and Sergey Grunyakhin as probable criminals. The men lived and worked in Rome and Lyudmila on the site, and then suddenly disappeared.

The prosecutor’s office refused to confirm the indictment three times, but Abuzaru’s arrest was extended. In April 2017, Gafurov was released from the pre-trial detention center, since the convincing evidence base could not be collected, but the status of the suspect was not withdrawn from him.

Bargaining for bribes

For three years, the case of the murder of Mukhametgalin and Dzhuma remained unsolved. In early 2019, he was assigned to Kazan specialists from the 1st Investigation Department of Tatarstan. Those began re-checking the materials of their colleagues from the Bavlinsky district. They again questioned the car dealer, Nail Vafin, who sold Mukhametgalin's car. Initially, the reseller claimed that he purchased the car personally from Rome. However, Kazan investigators found out that in the contract for the sale of cars there is a fake signature of the owner. After that, Wafin admitted that he lied at the first interrogation.

As it turned out, on April 18, 2016, Nail was sold to Grunyakhin and Keksel. Those told the reseller that the car belonged to their distant relative, who urgently needed money for treatment. Wafin checked that the car was not listed as a theft, and bought it from his brothers for 235 thousand rubles.

Nail tried to resell the car, but could not do this, because at that time the car was already registered as a theft. The reseller traveled to New Chuti and found out that the former owner of the car was killed.

Nail went to the police department of the Bavlinsky district, where he was informed that the real killer of Rome had already been caught. He was also offered to give a bribe of 100 thousand rubles to remove Mukhametgalin’s car from theft. Nail bargained to 60 thousand, the car was removed from the search base and he was soon able to sell it.

However, soon the police again called Vafin and demanded another 500 thousand rubles from him. Otherwise, he was threatened with a case of illegal sale of a car. Nail again managed to bring down the price and gave the police 100 thousand rubles.

Vafin’s new testimony formed the basis of criminal cases against Grunyakhin and Keksel, as well as three Bavlin police officers, all of whom were detained. Sergei Grunyakhin immediately admitted during interrogations that he had killed Mukhametgalin and Dzhuma. On November 1, the Supreme Court of the Republic of Tatarstan sentenced him to 20.5 years in prison.

Vyacheslav Keksel received two years probation for stealing a car. Despite the fact that the men acted together to steal the car, Keksel did not directly participate in the killings, the court decided. According to Vyacheslav, on the night of the crime, his brother went into the house of Mukhametgalin and 10 minutes later returned with the keys to the car. According to him, Keksel did not hear noise or screams from the street, and Grunyakhin did not tell him what had happened.

Currently, criminal cases are being investigated on bribe and abuse of power in relation to the former investigator of the SB OMVD of Russia in the Bavlinsky district of the Republic of Tatarstan, Ilnur Nazmutdinov, deputy head of the same police department Almaz Shakirov and detective officer Fanis Salavatov, all three are in custody.

RT will continue to monitor the situation.